Fans of John Lewis rejoice! Your favourite department store has reported its best-ever Christmas sales… ever! The high street chain clobbered its previous pre-recession best in 2007 with record revenues of over half a billion pounds in the five weeks up to Saturday and like-for-like sales up nearly 13 per cent from last year. All said and done, they’ve done rudely well in a so-called “recession”.

Fashion sales increased by over a fifth, home goods were up 19 per cent and electrical and technology sales increased by 11 per cent. John Lewis managing director Andy Street said that the five-week period had seen “a number of records broken”, but that it was unlikely the good fortune would continue through 2010. Spoilsport. Another director concluded the record December spending was down to people simply going batshit crazy: “People can only take so much bad news and then their heads burst open like bad eggs in a microwave this Christmas they wanted to shop.”

Yet more proof that airlines and recessions rarely make good bedfellows (BA staff, take note), Globespan has gone into administration this afternoon.

According to website TTG, flights that had already departed this evening will be grounded on arrival at their destinations, while all flights scheduled for tomorrow morning will not take off. In the last five minutes the website has been shut down, replaced by an notice from administrators.

It’s reported up to 5,000 holidaymakers will be stranded abroad by the collapse of the budget airline, which had bases at five airports in the UK and Ireland and flew to 17 destinations – most of which where in mainland Europe but also included Florida. PricewaterhouseCoopers are laughing al the way to the bank once more as they handle administration duties.

At Bitterwallet we’ve made our living over the past year by propagating idle speculation and wild gossip. But even we can’t hold a candle to the BBC, who this morning raised the spirits of a nation by declaring the UK economy was on the road to recovery, only to drag us back into “the longest recession on record” three hours later.

0814 – “Figures due later are expected to show that the UK economy grew slightly from July to September, meaning the recession is over”:

1136 – “The UK economy unexpectedly contracted by 0.4% between July and September, according to official figures, meaning the country is still in recession”:

The list of attempts by British Airways to reduce its recently announced £401 million pre-tax loss is beginning to look like a strategy document for Ryanair. It seems any and all suggestions for both raising and saving money are being considered, regardless of whether they fly in the face of common sense – pun possibly intended.

So far the list includes: asking staff to work for free for a month, no longer serving meals on short-haul flights, grounding 22 planes this coming Winter and considering charging economy passengers on short-haul flights for food, raising fees for excess baggage and changing charges for sports equipment.

Now add to that list the introduction of advertising on your boarding passes; the ads will begin appearing on the 12 million online boarding passes printed out by customers every year. BA are also going to begin accepting third party advertising on their website. It’d make perfect sense if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s a recession going on, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that British Airways are desperate for every penny they can find. Time to put BA on Deathwatch?

Like many tourism-related businesses, the Rancho Bernado Inn in San Diego is feeling the heat of the recession. So to get noticed, they’ve come up with a cracking promotion that is getting them column inches around the world.

Their survivor package allows you to choose how much you pay for your room – the less you pay, the less you get. It makes perfect sense until you find yourself with no lights. And no bedsheets. And no bed:

Whether the staff would ever be arsed enough to remove everything out of a room for the sake of $19 is debatable – it’s going to cost the hotel more than that in wages to clear and re-dress the room. It’s irrelevant though, because you’ve now heard of the Rancho Bernado Inn, and that’s the point.

Yesterday we told you about a potential disaster waiting for you in Spain when you arrive on your summer holidays – the country appears to be suffering from a massive shortage of hire cars. As we mentioned, in plenty of resorts the weekly rates have doubled since last year; even picking up a hire car at any cost at the airport is proving difficult in the likes of Murcia, Malaga, Alicante, Mallorca, Menorca and Barcelona.

Bitterwallet reader William Geddis commented on the story, confirming what we’d heard from holiday makers last week – that the situation is sadly as grim as it sounds:

Having booked a car a few months ago, the confirmation e-mail didn’t arrive after a fortnight. I phoned the company who said not to worry and that’d I’d be alright. Three weeks later I received a phone call telling me that they could not secure a car for me.

During the exchange I asked the agent why there was a shortage of cars this year; he replied that due to the recession the majority of hire companies did not renew their fleets this year – no new cars were purchased for these fleets which explains the shortage and higher prices.

The shortage will cause a massive headache for plenty of holidaymakers – especially for those heading to private accommodation miles off the beaten track – and it’s unlikely to suddenly improve in the next few weeks. You need to be aware that there are reports of longstanding bookings being cancelled days before customers are flying, so it’s best to be prepared:

Make a plan B
Take a few minutes to make a back-up plan, regardless of whether you’ve already have a booking or not. Obvious alternatives include private taxi and shuttle buses operated by the budget airlines, but these can be prohibitively expensive. Another option is to complete part of your journey by public transport – unsuitable for a family, but feasible for a couple or lone traveller. AngloInfo.com has links to most websites detailing public transport options in Spain.

Car-pool with other families
The cars snapped up first are the smallest because they’re the cheapest. There’s likely to be better availability of people-carriers, but of course the prices increase accordingly. If you’re aware of holidaymakers heading to the same resort, consider hiring a larger car together and splitting the costs.

Get in touch with ex-pats
Even if you don’t strike it lucky by finding a helpful countryman, you may get clearer advice on transport options in the region of Spain you’re heading to. Try posing a question in the British Expat Forums or BritishExpats.com.

If you’re planning on heading to Spain soon for your holiday, you need to know there’s trouble brewing in the Costas. The issue facing many arriving there is car hire or specifically, the lack of it. Having spent a week in Costa Blanca, I think it’s fair to say there is a massive shortage of cars available, and those you can hire are likely to cost you double the prices paid last year.

Talking to tourists around Murcia and Mar Menor, hire car companies are charging between £200 and £300 a week during July and August, if not more – even a block booking lasting a month may cost well over £1000. The net result is that plenty of families have paid far more for car hire than they have for their flights. On arriving at San Javier airports, the queues stretch back to the luggage belts at one car hire desk, while the others – those with no availability – have idle staff and no custom.

A search around the web reveals a possible cause – Travel Rants suggests the shortage of cars is because of the recession, with companies unable to purchase enough cars to meet demand, therefore pushing up the asking price of those that are available. But it gets worse – readers have left comments explaining that in some cases, car hire companies are cancelling bookings made months in advance with just days’ notice, presumably because more money can be made by fulfilling last minute bookings.

According to Travel Rants, those areas worse affected include Malaga, Alicante, Mallorca, Menorca and Barcelona. You can add Murcia to that list, too. Regardless, if you’re due to travel to Spain in the next few weeks and already have a car booked, you may be wise to re-confirm the booking. If you haven’t booked but know you’ll need one, start looking now or have a plan B in mind. Let us know if you’re affected by this, or if you’ve already lost out at the hands of the Spanish hire companies.

Driving a train on the London Underground. It’s a tough job, certainly. Not too much steering involved, mind, but well worth shelling out a starting salary of £40,000, 38 days holiday and free travel on public transport. You’ve got to wonder how they manage to put food on the table – no wonder the union is calling for a five per cent pay rise in the throes of a recession.

Some people just can’t help themselves but whine about what a bunch of self-centred, selfish, arrogant pricks the union officials are though. Especially the commuters. And with more strikes likely, you can guarantee more will moan and whinge like girls about how they can’t get to work and businesses across the capital are losing millions during said recession. Honestly, some people, eh?

For that minority of heartless commuters who care nothing for the plight of the penniless tube driver, here’s a song (from 2006, when drivers were paid even less, if such a figure is imaginable) you’ll no doubt revel in. So cruel.

[WARNING - LOTS OF POTTY-MOUTHED SINGING, USING ALL THE REALLY BAD SWEAR WORDS]

Cobra Beer may well be ingenious because less gaseous, but it’s also less genius because less good at making money. The company has been bought by a joint venture between corporate booze empire Molson Coors and founder Lord Karan Bilimora after sliding smoothly down the gullet of administration. Molson Coors already have their fingers in plenty of pints, including Carling, Grolsch and Coors Light.

The sale was agreed just before PricewaterhouseCoopers were appointed as administrators to the business, meaning the company was never offered on sale in public. Despite sales of nearly £200 million in the past year, the company has yet to make a profit in the past 20 years; the last set of accounts for the business to 2007 show an annual loss of £13 million.

Analysts believe the recession has seen a downturn in demand for premium lagers as drinkers stick to the domestic cooking lager, yet reports suggest Cobra Beer has grown sales by a fifth in the last twelve months. It’s quite a business that grows by 20 per cent in a recession, brings in £200 million in a year and is still on its arse. We can only put it down to some of the most godawful advertising every to flicker across our unsuspecting retinas:

We told you last week how British Airways had taken the economic recession on the chin, quickly followed by a Kato-style karate chop to the windpipe. BA reported a loss before tax of £401 million for the year to March 31st, compared to a profit of nearly £1 billion for the previous year. One of the reasons cited by the airline was the drop in passengers flying business and first class – a fall of 13 per cent – because it’s on these margins that airlines make their profits.

Not so at their price-fixing compadres/hotheaded competitors Virgin Atlantic, who have just announced an increase in revenue to the end of February of over eight per cent, and a near-doubling of profits from £34.8 million to £68.4 million. The airline carried nearly six million passengers – still a long way short of BA’s 33 million – but have stated the improved performance is down to the increase in sales of premium economy, business and first class seats.

Virgin have benefited from a series of strategic sales throughout the year, which have seen transatlantic flights drop to as little as £250 for economy seats, and around £500 for premium economy. BA’s current tactic is to go straight for the jugular with a business class sale, although economy flights for Autumn are currently available for a shade over £300.

We all expected airlines to have a stunningly lousy time during the recession, but even they weren’t expecting the degree to which they’d suffer. Today, British Airways have announced that increasing fuel costs, the weak pound and falling passenger numbers have seen the airline record their biggest loss in 22 years – since BA was privatised.

The company has reported a loss before tax of £401m for the year to March 31st – that’s compared to a profit of nearly £1 billion for the previous year. Where has all the money gone? Fuel costs rose by nearly 50 per cent last year, lumbering BA with a fuel bill of nearly £3 billion. Sacking people is also a costly affair – the airline cut 2,500 jobs and spent nearly £80 million in the process.

The drop in passenger numbers will also have execs screaming into their espressos; the total number for the year fell 4.3 per cent to 33.1 million. Worse still, since airlines like BA rely on margins from business and first class sales to make flights profitable, it’s grim news when the number of passengers flying in the posh seats falls 13 per cent in a year. It’s no surprise that BA has announced a sale on business class seats that’s continuing until the end of June.

Although the airline will begin cutting services to reduce costs, the bosses aren’t daft – they’re well aware of the British need to indulge in drinking, gambling and sunshine when times are hard, and so have just announced direct flights from Heathrow to Las Vegas from the Autumn.

How do you solve a problem like economic meltdown? Put it to a politician, and they’ll suggest spending your way out of it. But put the same question to a creative strategy consultant, and they’ll suggest a rebrand. And that’s the idea of the Dollar ReDe$ign Project – to do away with the imagery associated with the current mire, and get everybody excited with a brand new look.

All a little tongue-in-cheek, but Richard Smith is getting plenty of interest from designers, keen to do their bit to stimulate the US economy:

[Dollar ReDe$ign Project]

It’s not a great day for business today, as companies announce their profits from the past twelve months. Except this year, those profits are as scarce as grumble at a monastery. Step forward former bastion of telephony BT, which has reported an annual loss of £134m, and announced it’ll cut up to 15,000 jobs over the next 12 months. That’s on top of the 15,000 jobs lost in the past year, which was already 5,000 more than expected.

The biggest losses were suffered by its global services unit, which operates large-scale IT services for the likes of the Government, and is expected to contribute losses of £1.5 billion. All this after BT posted profits of £2 billion last year. Clumsy.

Meanwhile Sony celebrated the launch of their new Walkman X series yesterday, but then reported its first annual loss in 14 years, of £685 million. It’s almost as if the good news were announced to eclipse the bad news, or something. Anyway, compared to the jillions Sony rakes in from dozens of divisions every year, two thirds of a billion pounds is relatively small potatos. The worry is a drop in worldwide sales of 13 per cent, and whether those sales will return; will you be buying the new Walkman?

Last week, Easyjet announced it was cancelling flights from Newcastle to Prague, a route it has successfully operated for six years. While it greatly diminishes the risk of encountering a pissed-up hen night in one of the finest capitals of Europe, it also means there are no longer direct flights from the North East of England to the Czech Republic.

In isolation that might appear to be great no great loss, but airlines have been quietly shedding flights for the past several months, and unsurprisingly it’s been the regional airports that have lost out. Plenty of new routes have been introduced in the meantime, but many of these are to destinations already served by other airlines.

Dozens of routes disappeared shortly before the end of 2008. How does 2009 look so far?

January

BMI withdrew its flights from Manchester to Chicago and Las Vegas, following BA’s lead in November to end its Manchester to New York service.

In London village, Delta announced the end of its service from Gatwick to Seattle, while Northwest quit its London to Detroit service. Jet Airways bailed out of its Heathrow to Amritsar route, while BA ended flights from London to Kolkata, Dhaka and Zurich. BMI announced all flights between Heathrow and Jersey would end in March.

February

BMI announced that flights from Heathrow to Leeds-Bradford and Durham-Tees Valley would end in March.

Manchester suffered the loss of more international routes when Thomson Airways announced the end of flights to Tel Aviv in April, while Ryanair dropped seven weekly services between Dublin and Manchester. The budget airline also cut ten routes from Liverpool, including Paris, Budapest, Valencia and Faro.

Flyglobespan scrapped all flights out of Durham Tees Valley airport.

March

Ryanair took an axe to routes originating in Dublin, announcing the closure of four routes from Dublin to Basel, Doncaster, Oporto and Teesside in July, and a reduction in services from Dublin to Aberdeen, Biarritz, Billund, Bournemouth, Carcassonne, East Midlands, Malaga and Rome.

April

easyJet has dropped flights between Luton and Warsaw from July in a dispute over costs, and cancelled flights between Newcastle and Prague because of falling passenger numbers.

This month, domestic flights have fallen by 13 per cent while international flights have dropped off by 10 per cent. The problem isn’t isolated to the UK, however – according to the Official Airline Guide, airlines around the world are reporting fewer scheduled flights and reduced capacity for the ninth consecutive month.

The only benefit to the situation has been an improvement in punctuality since airport traffic reduced. That’ll be little comfort when the sun-drenched apartment you bought three years ago is now at the end of an airline route that doesn’t exist anymore.

After predicting the collapse of the High Street at Christmas time, it’s been all too quiet on the Deathwatch front recently. Not to worry because Bay Trading has started the ball rolling again, after announcing it was been placed in administration.

1,000 jobs at nearly 300 branches of the store are at risk. Parent company Alexon – who also own lesser known brands such as Ann Harvey, Dash, Estrex and Kaliko – reported a full year pre-tax loss of nearly £28 million, compared with a profit of £12 million the previous year.

The company has stated that Bay Trading had been loss-making and had relied on funding from the rest of the group to survive. Administrators Deloitte are to keep the stores running for the time being to try and secure a buyer. Good luck with that.

[BBC]