Swim with great whites off Cape Town? Yawn. Get up close with grizzlies in Canada? So last century. What today's adventurer needs is to climb in a cage in the middle of an aquarium full of saltwater crocodiles. Don't worry, adults are only 6m (20ft) long and weigh 1,000kg (2,200lb). Crocosaurus Cove (www.crocosauruscove.com), near Darwin in Australia, has introduced the “cage of death” for those who want to get up close and personal. Just make sure you're wearing brown swimming trunks, cobber.

Debrief

Who says New Yorkers are all food (and drink) fascists who'll sip water only if it has come from a volcano in Vanuatu? Certainly not those behind Tap'd (www.tapdny.com), now selling bottles of purified NYC tap water in the Big Apple. The producers call the stuff the “champagne of tap waters” and say that it does away with the guilt miles associated with imported water from France or Fiji.

Site of the week: www.vhiphotels.co.uk

Virgin Holidays has teamed up with Herbert Ypma's Hip Hotel guides to launch a dedicated sales brochure that looks more coffee-table than catalogue. Customers making inquiries won't get a travel agent but a personal travel guru, according to the blurb. Their adviser will be able to help them to get on the guest list at clubs in New York or book spa appointments in Hong Kong.

Lady in red

A TNT survey of more than 1,000 people intending to go to the magazine's Winter Travel Show in London today reveals the startling revelation that our miserable British weather is an incentive to go abroad. Blimey, who would have guessed? Women's ideal holiday partner would be Gok Wan (a nooky-free fortnight, then ladies) while men would like to jet off with Helen Mirren. Amy Winehouse was the number one travel nightmare, although perhaps not for Dame Helen, given the latter's recent admissions about her hard-partying past.

Will Hide

BELLBOY

QUICK ON THE DRAW

In the first hour of a Travelodge sale of £9 rooms last week, the budget chain sold a room every 1.25sec. The promotion is on until September 21.

BOG STANDARDS

A four-bedroom B&B in Blackpool has opened under the name Four Seasons (nothing to do with the international chain), promising “the best hotel bathrooms, not just in Blackpool but the whole world”.

IT ROCKS

Rocksresort, a ski village with cube-shaped buildings that look like giant rocks, including a 75-room hotel, is planned this winter for Laax, Switzerland.

STALIN NIGHTS

Guests (or comrades) can stay in one of the “Seven Sisters” towers built by Stalin in Moscow. A Hilton hotel is taking bookings in the tower on Leningradskaya. Rooms from £200.

DUKE'S PLACE

Leeds has a new hotel with a jazz theme: The Ellington. The hotel has pictures of jazz greats and a stylish restaurant with a menu overseen by Albert Roux. The look evokes “a Cotton Club atmosphere”.

Tom Chesshyre

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