Time in Transit launches website for air passengers

The newly-launched www.timeintransit.com helps you make the most of your travel time. This innovative travel site, based in the tourism hub of Dubai, is now live with online guides to five locations in the fast-growing Arabian Gulf region, covering Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Bahrain and Sharjah.

Each location is explored depending on how much time you have to spare on a stopover, whether it's a few hours or an overnight stay. It features a detailed airport guide, city highlights for short-stay travellers and hand-picked choices of bars, restaurants and attractions within easy reach of the airport.

"A large and growing number of UK air travellers are now flying through the Gulf on long-haul flights," says Alex Warren, Managing Editor of Time in Transit. "Airlines like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways are all expanding their UK routes, using a hub-and-spoke model that takes millions of people through growing cities like Dubai or Abu Dhabi."

"By providing genuinely useful, tailored information, we help passengers to think differently about their travel time. Many UK passengers don't know that they can get a visa on arrival at these airports, which means that if you've got more than three or four hours in transit, then you should get out and see some local flavours."

As well as finding travel advice from on-the-ground correspondents, you can book your flights, hotels and rental car all on the Time in Transit site and post your own tips. Its sister print guide, The Gulf Airports Guide, is now in its second edition and can be picked up around the region's airports.

Throughout 2008 the website will expand its coverage to include major hubs in Europe and Asia, targeting those airports with high proportions of international passengers.

"We chose to cover the Gulf first for a simple reason: it has the fastest-growing air traffic in the world, and a very high proportion of those international passengers are on connecting flights," says Alex Warren. "In 2007 more than 70 million people used the five airports we cover - that's more than seven times the combined population of the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar."