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Menorca or Majorca It is that time of the year again. The brochures are piling up in travel agents while newspapers and magazines bulge with advice about where to go. But the traditional packaged holiday, a British innovation that provided many timid natives with their first experience of warm sand, is not what it was. Indeed, the industry is anxiously awaiting a High Court ruling to find out exactly what it now is.Two things have changed the way Britons research and book their holidays: low-cost airlines and the Internet. Instead of buying a ready-made package consisting of a flight, hotel, car hire and assorted entertainment from a tour operator"s brochure, it is now easy to put together a trip using an online travel agent like Expedia or Travelocity, which last July bought Lastminute. corn for ￡577 million ($1 billion), or from the proliferating websites of airlines, hotels and car-rental firms.This has led some to sound the death knell for high-street travel agents and tour operators. There have been upheavals and closures, but the traditional firms are starting to fight back, in part by moving more of their business online. First Choice Holidays, for instance, saw its pre-tax profit rise by 16% to ￡114 million ($196 million) in the year to the end of October. Although the overall number of holidays booked has fallen, the company is concentrating on more valuable long-haul and adventure trips. First Choice now sells more than half its trips directly, either via the Internet, over the telephone or from its own travel shops. It wants that to reach 75% within a few years.Other tour operators are showing similar hustle. MyTravel managed to cut its loss by almost half in 2005. Thomas Cook and Thomson Holidays, now both German owned, are also bullish about the coming holiday season. High-street travel agents are having a tougher time, though, not least because many leading tour operations have cut the commissions they pay.Some high-street travel agents are also learning to live with the Internet, helping people book complicated trips that they have researched online, providing advice and tacking on other services. This is seen as a growth area. But if an agent puts together separate flights and hotel accommodation, is that a package, tooThe Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says it is and the agent should hold an Air Travel Organisers Licence, which provides financial guarantees to repatriate people and provide refunds. The scheme dates from the early 1970s, when some large British travel firms went bust, stranding customers on the Costas. Although such failures are less common these days, the CAA had to help out some 30,000 people last year. The Association of British Travel Agents went to the High Court in November to argue such bookings are not traditional packages and so do not require agents to acquire the costly licences. While the court decides, millions of Britons will happily click away buying online holidays, unaware of the difference. According to the first and last paragraphs, which of the following is still in suspense
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The last-minute victory of the Texas Longhorns in this year"s Rose Bowl— America"s college football championship—was the kind of thing that stays with fans forever. Just as well, because many had paid vast sums to see the game. Rose Bowl tickets officially sold for $175 each. On the Internet, resellers were hawking them for as much as $3,000 a pop. "Nobody knows how to control this," observed Mitch Dorger, the tournament"s chief executive.Reselling tickets for a profit, known less politely as scalping in America or touting in Britain, is booming. In America alone, the "secondary market" for tickets to sought-after events is worth over $10 billion, reckons Jeffrey Fluhr, the boss of StubHub, an online ticket market. Scalping used to be about burly men lurking outside stadiums with fistfuls of tickets. Cries of "Tickets here, tickets here" still ring out before kick-off. But the Internet has created a larger and more efficient market. Some Internet-based ticket agencies, such as tickco.com and dynamiteticketz.com act as traditional scalpers, buying up tickets and selling them on for a substantial mark-up. But others like StubHub have a new business model—bring together buyers and sellers, and then take a cut. For each transaction, StubHub takes a juicy 25%.Despite its substantial commission—far higher than those charged by other online intermediaries including eBay or Craigslist—StubHub is flourishing. The firm was set up in 2000 and this year"s Rose Bowl was its biggest event ever. The Super Bowl in early February will bring another nice haul, as have U2 and Rolling Stones concerts. Unlike eBay, which is the largest online trader in tickets, StubHub guarantees each transaction, so buyers need not worry about fraud. The company"s revenues, now around $200 million, are tripling annually (despite its start in the dotcom bust). And there is plenty more room to grow. Mr. Fluhr notes that the market remains "highly fragmented", with tiny operations still flourishing and newspaper classified not yet dead.But there are risks. Some events are boosting prices to cut the resale margins; others are using special measures to crack down. This summer, tickets to the soccer World Cup in Germany will include the name and passport number of the original purchaser and embedded chips that match the buyer to the tickets.Then there are legal worries. In America, more than a dozen states have anti-scalping laws of various kinds. New Mexico forbids the reselling of tickets for college games; Mississippi does so for all events on government-owned property. Such laws are often ignored, but can still bite. In Massachusetts, where reselling a ticket for more than $2 above face value is unlawful, one fan brought a lawsuit last autumn against 16 companies (including StubHub) over his pricey Red Sox tickets. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ______.
Ernest Hemingway was one of the most important American writers in the history of contemporary American literature. He was the 1 spokesperson for the Lost Generation and also the sixth American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1954). His writing style and personal life 2 a 3 influence on American writers of his time.Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in a doctor"s family in Oak Park, in the 4 of Chicago. The novel 5 established Hemingway"s 6 was The Sun Also Rises (1926). The story described a group of 7 Americans and Britons living in France. That is to 8 , it described the life of the members of the 9 Lost Generation after World War I. Hemingway"s second major novel was AFarewell to Arms(1929), a love story 10 in wartime Italy. That novel was 11 byDeath in the Afternoon(1932) andGreen Hills of Africa(1935). His two 12 of short storiesMen without Women(1927) andWinner Take Nothing(1933) established his fame 13 the master of short stories.In the late 1930"s, Hemingway began to express 14 about social problems. His novelTo Have and Have Not(1937) 15 economic and political injustices. The novelFor Whom the Bell Tolls(1940) 16 the conflict of the Spanish Civil War. In 1952, Hemingway publishedThe Old Man and the Sea, for 17 he won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize. In 1954, Hemingway was 18 the Nobel Prize of Literature. Later, being 19 and ill, he shot 20 on July 2, 1961.
Ernest Hemingway was one of the most important American writers in the history of contemporary American literature. He was the 1 spokesperson for the Lost Generation and also the sixth American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1954). His writing style and personal life 2 a 3 influence on American writers of his time.Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in a doctor"s family in Oak Park, in the 4 of Chicago. The novel 5 established Hemingway"s 6 was The Sun Also Rises (1926). The story described a group of 7 Americans and Britons living in France. That is to 8 , it described the life of the members of the 9 Lost Generation after World War I. Hemingway"s second major novel was AFarewell to Arms(1929), a love story 10 in wartime Italy. That novel was 11 byDeath in the Afternoon(1932) andGreen Hills of Africa(1935). His two 12 of short storiesMen without Women(1927) andWinner Take Nothing(1933) established his fame 13 the master of short stories.In the late 1930"s, Hemingway began to express 14 about social problems. His novelTo Have and Have Not(1937) 15 economic and political injustices. The novelFor Whom the Bell Tolls(1940) 16 the conflict of the Spanish Civil War. In 1952, Hemingway publishedThe Old Man and the Sea, for 17 he won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize. In 1954, Hemingway was 18 the Nobel Prize of Literature. Later, being 19 and ill, he shot 20 on July 2, 1961.
"This is a really exciting time—a new era is starting," says Peter Bazalgette, the chief creative officer of Endemol, the television company behind "Big Brother" and other popular shows. He is referring to the upsurge of interest in mobile television, a nascent industry at the intersection of telecoms and media which offers new opportunities to device-makers, content producers and mobile-network operators. And he is far from alone in his enthusiasm.Already, many mobile operators offer a selection of television channels or individual shows, which are "streamed" across their third-generation (3G) networks. In Korea, television is also sent to mobile phones via satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks, which is far more efficient than sending video across mobile networks; similar broadcasts will begin in Japan in April. In Europe, the Italian arm of 3, a mobile operator, recently acquired Canale 7, a television channel, with a view to launching mobile-TV broadcasts in Italy in the second half of 2006. Similar mobile-TV networks will also be built in Finland and America, and are being tested in many other countries.Meanwhile, Apple Computer, which launched a video-capable version of its iPod portable music-player in October, is striking deals with television networks to expand the range of shows that can be purchased for viewing on thedevice, including "Lost", "Desperate Housewives" and "Law & Order". TiVo, maker of the pioneering personal video recorder (PVR), says it plans to enable subscribers to download recorded shows on to iPods and other portable devices for viewing on the move. And mobile TV was one of the big trends at the world"s largest technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show, which took place in Las Vegas this week.Despite all this activity, however, the prospects for mobile TV are unclear. For a start, nobody really knows if consumers will pay for it, though surveys suggest they like the idea. Informa, a consultancy, says there will be 125 million mobile-TV users by 2010. But many other mobile technologies inspired high hopes and then failed to live up to expectations. And even if people do want TV on the move, there is further uncertainty in three areas: technology, business models and the content itself. The word "device" in the first sentence of the third paragraph denotes ______.
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