John Penrose answered a written question in the House yesterday about the finances of Stonehenge. In 2010/11 it cost �2,490,900 to run Stonehenge against revenues of �7,173,582 a surplus of �4,682,682 – a big contribution to the funding of English Heritage.

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The Royal Wedding is becoming a major international media event, a major opportunity to market London for tourism. Mark Di-Toro a spokesman for VisitBritain is reported in The Times (23 April 2011) as having predicted �50m of tourist spend in one day, based on a normal day of 500,000 tourists in London plus 600,000 additional tourists for the wedding. Visit Britain is using the wedding as a springboard for a �100m global marketing campaign starting with the wedding, running on through the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee. VisitBritain is forecasting an extra �2billion for the British economic and 50,000 extra jobs.

I would not be surprised if the legacy of the media coverage of the wedding is bigger than that of the Olympics � the wedding will showcase the pageantry and architecture of London far more than will the Olympics. The Wedding will cost the taxpayer significantly less than the Olympics.  Read more

Interest is such that the Place is under pressure to extend the lighting of Buckingham Palace to keep the lights on by American and Australian broadcasters to facilitate their coverage of the event. Tom Barton, programme manager for the Foreign Press Association, said it was ridiculous to turn the lights out for the sake of climate change during the biggest broadcast event of recent years. Read more

Mark Bridge has written in The Times Money Section today under the headline �Gap �year volunteers are charged thousands for �pointless� projects. It is surprising that there has been so little critical coverage of the sale of volunteering holidays in the travel pages, when the criticism comes, it is over more than a page in the main section of The Times.  Travel journalists should do a great deal more to help prospective volunteers make informed choices.

The criticism, based on comments from Dr Kate Simpson of ethicalvolunteering.org; an insider at Real Gap Experience (owned by TUI), and from Peter Bishop at Tourism Concern asserts that
�    There are significant mark ups on placement costs
�    There is significant dissatisfaction among customers
�    Volunteers displace local employees
�    Volunteers feel that they have been placed for the sake of it � rather than for their contribution
�    That the most profitable include those that enable volunteers to �cuddle animals and take photos�.
�    There are issues about the transparency about where the money goes.

This litany of complaints will be familiar to anyone who takes the time to look at the adverse comments on blogs. Caveat emptor applies to the purchase of volunteering trips abroad as much as to any other travel experience � and the same remedies for misselling and non-delivery on the promises made in the brochure or on the website apply to voluntourism as to any other form of tourism.

Read more
The Times carried extensive coverage of the issues back in 2006 Read more

Disaffected volunteers should use the remedies available to them and seek compensation for breach of contract through ABTA.  The same rules apply to volunteering abroad as do to sun, sand and sea holidays. Complain, make a difference.