Cathay Pacific is kicking off the New Year by offering travellers the chance to explore bucket list destinations across Australia and Asia for less cash in 2025
You can bag cut-price flights to a string of bucket-list destinations, but for a limited time only.
Cathay Pacific is kicking off the New Year by offering travellers the chance to explore bucket list destinations across Australia and Asia for less in 2025. Cathay Pacific customers can secure lower flight fares for travel between 17 January and 7 December this year.
The offers are available to book throughout January. You could be island hopping Thailand with flights to Bangkok starting at £649, exploring the outback with flights from £899 to Australia, or discovering historic temples in Japan from just £849. Those looking to jet away can even explore the Chinese Mainland for less, with flights to Xiamen and Guangzhou from as low as £579, including fees and surcharges.
The following flights from the UK are available now:
Australia
Travel to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Cairns.
· Economy from £899
· Premium Economy from £2,769
· Business from £5,289
Japan
Travel to Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and Fukuoka.
· Economy from £849
· Premium Economy from £1,669
· Business from £3,289
Taiwan
Travel to Taipei.
· Economy from £779
· Premium Economy from £2,009
· Business from £3,919
Cathay Pacific also has deals going for flights to Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, the Chinese Mainland and Singapore
If you are planning a big trip away this year, but prefer to stay on the rails, then there are plenty of exciting things happening in 2025 in the world of trains. One particularly big development is that you can now get from Paris to Berlin in eight hours.
There is now a direct high-speed train service between Paris, France and Berlin, Germany. Germany’s Deutsche Bahn introduced a daytime InterCity Express (ICE) service between Paris and Berlin on December 16 and plans to introduce a second route between the two capitals in 2026. The service uses ICE3neo trains which can travel 200mph and it operates once a day, also stopping at Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt on its 546-mile journey. Tickets for the service cost from £47.85 and the train can hold up to 444 passengers. It is the first direct daytime train between Paris and Berlin since the 1990s and complements the Nightjet sleeper service introduced in 2023.
Italy is also gaining a new train service named La Dolce Vita, featuring 11 luxurious cars, a bar with live music, 12 deluxe wood-lined cabins and 18 master suites complete with double beds, a sofa, armchairs and private bathrooms, according to CNN. The service will open with six different one- or two-night itineraries from Rome starting at around £1,594.99 a person. International routes to Paris, Istanbul and Split on Croatia’s Adriatic Coast will also be added at a later date.
A European Sleeper is opening up new routes in 2025 including a redeployment of its sleeper train between Brussels and Venice, Italy, for five returning trips.
The service will depart Brussels at 7pm, travel overnight via the Netherlands and Germany, calling at various points including Munich, Innsbruck, Bolzano and Verona, before finally reaching Venice at 2pm the following day. The carriages have been renovated and include sleeping compartments, couchette bed, reclining seats, charging points and Wi-Fi.
