Long-haul and last-minute hols - Sunday travel section digest

Excellent news for holiday makers. The Sunday Times' campaign against rental car companies' sharp practices has borne fruit. Mark Hodson reports that the EU commissioner for consumer protection plans to close a loophole that exempts companies from having to explain their terms and conditions "at the point of sale". The commissioner has also voiced his support for another aim: "a ban on companies adding charges to customers’ credit cards after the rental period." It is very good news indeed.

The Independent on Sunday goes big on far-flung holidays today. Ian McCurrach rounds up ten long-haul deals (last minute too) and even tells us what the weather will be like in each destination. One of the favoured far-flung spots is Banff in Canada - for the walking trails not the ski runs. Coincidentally, The Observer and The Sunday Times have features on high-altitude holidays too.

Search and compare: flights to Banff.

Rhiannon Batten (The Observer) writes that when the snow has melted, the Alps take on a whole new identity and The Sunday Times says that with alpine flowers dotting the pistes, "it’s time to make for the mountains".

Why would a British (we are assuming) journalist seek out a spot of France that hasn't yet got an expat population, expose it in the pages of The Sunday Times and then say: "Go before the invasion"? That's precisely what Stephen Clarke does. Corrèze, east of Dordogne, is, Clarke writes, a place where "you can still be sure that the old guy in a beret coming out of the boulangerie is not an ex-maths teacher from Surbiton". It's not very neighbourly, but perhaps it is understandable. Certainly, Mark Townsend (The Observer) wonders if letting in the world to a magical place can ever be a good thing. Townsend is in Ringha, "amid the foothills of the vast central Tibetan plateau", to try out the Banyan Tree resort. Ringha is close to "the nearby town of Shangri-La", which was depicted in Lost Horizon, the 1930s novel by James Hilton, as an isolated mountain paradise. Townsend hopes it can retain something of its otherworldliness despite the "arrival of moneyed Westerners".

Yesterday, we had the Princes Islands in Turkey, today it is the "Cotswolds of Japan" or Matsushima Bay. Adrian Mourby (The Independent on Sunday) writes: "People in Tokyo often weekend in Matsushima during the summer. It's what the Cotswolds is to Londoners, a 24-hour return to nature and the simple life." Mourby runs through ten things to see in the area, places to eat and, helpfully, lists tourist websites.

Capri-bound visitors beware: The Sunday Times is warning that a summer of wildcat strikes may lie ahead following the closure of a popular ferry service last week.

"Celebs" on holiday this week include Sandra Howard, wife of Michael, the former Conservative leader, in Zambia for The Mail on Sunday; BBC newsreader Darren Jordon in Jamaica (The Independent on Sunday) and Virginia Wade, (The Observer) the tennis player and BBC commentator, who loves Majorca, but can't see much reason to revisit Moscow.

Finally, Hilary Fennell (The Sunday Independent) kicks back in the southern Indian province of Kerala, a state promoted by its government as God's Own Country. While there, Fennell stays at Raheem Residency, a classy boutique hotel owned by an Irish former broadcaster and writer, which offers special rates for writers in the off-season. A heavenly offer in an earthly paradise.

© Cheapflights Ltd Oonagh Shiel