Holidaymakers celebrating Chinese New Year at the tourist resort of Lushan Mountain will have been treated to a winter wonderland as a thick layer of gleaming white snow covered the area during the three-day celebration.

This year’s Spring Festival Golden Week saw the mountain resort record its heaviest snowfall of the winter season this year as tens of thousands of tourists celebrated the year of the dragon.

Lushan Mountain has been promoting itself to families in recent years as the ideal location for a winter holiday. And its efforts have seemingly paid off this year as visitor numbers to the mountain resort increased by 11.8% from last year, to reach 40,000. The number of tourists visiting the area has been steadily rising over the last few years, with the resort proving particularly popular over Chinese New Year.

The resort’s popularity is also likely to have been boosted by the large number of cheap flights to China from the UK. There are numerous flights available to the country from British airports such as Heathrow and Gatwick.

The area’s well-known scenic spots such as Lushan Central Park, Blossom Path, Jinxiu Valley and fairy Cave, have received the highest volume of traffic, with families of all ages enjoying the beautiful views.

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The 2012 Games commence in six months’ time and details of a specially designed terminal to deal with the thousands of athletes expected to pass through Heathrow Airport have been unveiled.

The airport’s owners BAA has drawn up plans for an Olympics terminal in order to cope with the 10,100 competitors expected to arrive in London prior to the start of the sporting extravaganza, which gets under way on July 27.

August 13, the day after the closing ceremony, is widely expected to be the busiest in Heathrow’s history, which has prompted BAA to introduce a number of measures to ensure that things run smoothly. It is estimated that the number of bags handled on this day will be 35% higher than usual.

BAA plans to offer check-in and baggage collection services at the Olympic and Paralympic Village and will train 1,000 volunteers to welcome those people arriving for the Games.

Nick Cole, head of Olympic and Paralympic planning at Heathrow, said the Games will represent a “unique operational task” and a “massive challenge”.

Meanwhile, Qatar Airways passengers who want to avoid the Olympics frenzy might want to escape to its new lounge for first and business-class passengers in Terminal 4.

The lounge offers five-star service, including refreshments, entertainment and free WiFi.

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Passenger levels at the UK’s six BBA-operated airports rose by 4.4% in 2011, with Heathrow leading the way with its best-ever year.

The west London airport put a difficult 2010 behind it to post a 5.5% rise in passenger numbers in 2011, as nearly 69.4 million people passed through its doors.

After adjusting for unforeseen events such as the adverse winter weather of December 2010, the British Airways strikes and the Icelandic volcanic ash, BAA revealed that the underlying increase was 0.9%.

December was a particularly busy period for Heathrow Airport, handling a record number of travellers at nearly 5.52 million. It handled a record 476,197 flights, which is just under its annual limit of 480,000.

BAA has complained that capacity restrictions at Heathrow is preventing the UK economy from growing further, and it is frustrated by the Government’s decision not to commission a third runway at the airport.

BAA chief executive Colin Matthews said: “As the UK’s only international hub airport, Heathrow is central to developing our trade links with fast-growing emerging markets. Capacity constraints are damaging the UK economy today when the country can least afford it.

“A new hub airport has been proposed in south-east England, but this has a projected cost of £50 billion and may take decades to build. During this time we would be handing over on a plate the UK’s historic trade advantages to our European competitors.”

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Regular London-based travellers to Stuttgart will have a wider variety of flights to chose from next month as Germanwings introduces a new service from Heathrow Airport.

The Cologne-based low-cost airline, which already flies to Stansted, Manchester and Edinburgh, will offer 21 flights a week from Heathrow from the start of February. It also provides flights to Dublin during the summer.

In July, Germanwings will bolster its schedule out of Manchester by adding five weekly Stuttgart flights to its roster. It already provides four weekly flights to Cologne from Manchester.

The deal means that the airline will fly to all of parent company Lufthansa’s European destinations from Stuttgart. The move also goes a long way to reinforce the airline’s commitment to its UK-based customers.

Germanwings announced that the new services were only made possible because it has been working more closely with Lufthansa.

Flights from Stuttgart will leave for Heathrow Airport at 7.20am, 12.40pm and 5.10pm, with flights departing from Heathrow at 8.40am, 2.05 pm and 6.45pm. The last Sunday flight from Heathrow to Suttgart will leave at 6.35pm.

A statement by the company said it was “improving its offering via a consolidated network that sees Germanwings fly to all Lufthansa European destinations out of Stuttgart as of summer 2012″.

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The choice of holiday that people make during the peak booking period of January and February is said to be influenced by the television shows and films they watch over Christmas and new year, according to the Association of British Travel Agents.

Many holiday firms also tend to start their TV adverts for the following year on Boxing Day to get as many people as possible heading to the airport such as Heathrow and Stansted.

BBC1’s Frozen Planet series, for example, has inspired many to investigate trips to the Antarctic and the Arctic.

Also likely to feed demand for those regions are US-based documentary Earthflight, which follows snow geese from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole, and Bear’s Wild Weekend With Miranda, in which comedian Miranda Hart treks the Swiss Alps with explorer Bear Grylls.

Other regions being promoted are India, with presenters from motoring show Top Gear travelling the massive nation’s cities, and the US, when TV celebrities Dara O’Briain, Rory McGrath, Griff Rhys Jones mark the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in Three Men Go To New England.

Films also likely to inspire a bit of travelling are Ratatouille, which sees a rat become a chef in a Parisian restaurant, and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, in which animals break out from a New York zoo and return to their homeland.

Middle Eastern airline Emirates is to add a new plane to its route to Dubai from London Heathrow Airport as part of plans to boost its overall capacity.

An Airbus A380 will replace the route’s current Boeing 777 from March 25 next year in a move that will make the airline the largest operator of Airbus A380s at Heathrow.

The new addition will be the fourth Airbus A380 making the journey from Heathrow to Dubai after Emirates previously announced that it will be launching its third A380 service on the route from January 24, 2012. The plane will also replace a Boeing 777 in this instance.

Heathrow is notorious for its limitations in terms of passenger numbers, but Emirates hopes to get round this by introducing more A380s, which are the world’s largest passenger planes.

Salem Obaidalla, Emirates’ senior vice president of commercial operations in Europe, said: “This demonstrates the beauty of the A380 – its ability to increase our service to our passengers in style and without adding traffic to London Heathrow’s busy schedule. We would like to acknowledge the support and cooperation of the Heathrow authorities in bringing a fourth A380 to the British capital.”

The airline also has plans to add wireless internet access to all of its Airbus superjumbos in the future. It is already available on 11 of the planes, with the remaining eight due to follow.

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Last-minute holidaymakers could still book a plane ticket to Thailand in order to see the annual River Kwai Light and Sound Festival, which starts on Friday November 25.

The event takes places in the town of Kanchanaburi in western Thailand and will last for twelve days. It attracts thousands of people from all around the world every year and is regarded by many as Thailand’s best festival.

The event features a spectacular light show next to the famous bridge on the River Kwai, as well as daily live music performances and a large market where tourists can sample traditional Thai delicacies for free.

The festival was set up to commemorate the day allied forces destroyed a rail bridge which crossed the River Kwai, causing severe disruption to Japan’s transport connections.

The famous book “The Bridge over the River Kwai” by Pierre Boulle, which was also turned into a successful film, fictionalised the event which many believe helped to to bring the war in Southeast Asia to an end.

Even though the book’s representation of this vital moment in World War II has been widely criticised by historians and ex war prisoners, the bridge, which was later rebuilt, still serves as a major attraction for holidaymakers from abroad.

Travellers can fly to Thailand from Heathrow or other major UK airports.

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Heathrow Airport, the main entry point for London 2012, has started its search for volunteers to greet important people arriving for the Games.

Heathrow, the official host airport for the Olympics and Paralympics, will greet around 80% of international athletes, officials, media, spectators and VIPs heading for the world sporting events from outside the UK.

It now wants 1,000 Team Heathrow volunteers to help with the coming influx at the four terminals. They are eligible for a range of London 2012 or Heathrow related rewards.

In addition to the Games, the volunteers will work at the airport on next June’s Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, just over a month prior to the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Residents from the Heathrow area in Middlesex who want to be involved have been invited to sign up to attend the first selection day at Hounslow’s Heathrow Academy on November 12.

And with the airport being the world’s third busiest, the attraction goes both ways as millions of passengers per year fly out to holiday and business destinations around the world.

“This is an exciting time for Great Britain,” said Colin Matthews, chief executive of British Airports Authority (BAA), which owns Heathrow and six other British airports. “And it is an honour for everyone at Heathrow to be amongst the first to welcome athletes and others to the London 2012 Games,” he added.

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Heathrow remains the gateway to Britain, as the number of foreign residents using it has increased for another year in a row.

Last year, 58% of passengers using Heathrow were foreign residents – this figure stood at 55% in 2007, and has climbed steadily ever since.

The findings came to light thanks to a passenger survey from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The survey was based on responses from more than 200,000 departing air passengers about their travel habits in 2010 at five London airports and seven regional ones.

In 2010, 36% of passengers using Heathrow were connecting passengers – a drop from the 38% in 2009, but higher than the 2008 figure of 35% and the 2007 figure of 34%.

The survey underlines the importance of Heathrow as a leading international airport.

Heathrow operator BAA is at odds with the Government’s decision to rule out a third runway at the west London airport.

Supporters maintain that curbing expansion will result in Britain losing out economically to European rivals.

The airports involved in the survey include: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City – and seven regional airports – Birmingham, Doncaster, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Liverpool, Manchester and East Midlands.

Some 51% of the passengers at London City airport were foreign residents.

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Novelist Tony Parsons, who spent a week living at Heathrow Airport earlier this year, returned to Terminal 5 on Thursday to read extracts from his new book.

The Man And Boy author and Daily Mirror columnist was the airport’s writer-in-residence for a week in August, where he roamed the terminals talking to travellers and staff looking for inspiration for a collection of short stories.

In an event that was also streamed on Heathrow’s Facebook page, the ex-journalist read from his book entitled Departures: Seven Stories From Heathrow – 5,000 copies of which were handed out to passengers ahead of its publication.

Speaking about his new book and the time he spent living at the airport, he said: “There’s something both magical and majestic in the way that airports allow us to connect to the world in a way that would have been unfathomable to my parents’ generation.

“I feel very fortunate for the experiences I have had as Heathrow’s writer-in-residence and for the chance to learn more about the airport’s unique history, folklore and truly global residents.

“It has opened my eyes to how Heathrow is not just a hub for physical journeys, but also very often where passengers reach a crossroads in their lives and embark on new and life-changing experiences.

“I even got caught up myself in the intense emotion that takes place here during my stay as I waved goodbye to emigrating friends and met an uncle that I hadn’t seen in two decades.”

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