New York, NY – BBC Travel has launched its next phase of investment leading with a new section, a blog called The Passport–www.bbc.com/travel/blog. The Passport is the home of breaking travel news, daily deals, exclusive sketches from a world traveler’s notebook and hotel and restaurant openings.

“There’s an emotional connection travellers have to passports — even the most seasoned traveller can’t help but flip through their pages every so often and feel a bit of pride or satisfaction at seeing those stamps,” Editorial Director David G. Allan said. “Also, as we all know, it is the ONE thing you cannot forget when you go outside your country. Everything else you pack can be replaced. The Passport is, essentially, the only thing you need to go.”

The Passport features:

• BBC Travel’s business travel columnist Chris McGinnis with contributors in London, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and New York. They cover everything in the world of travel from daily breaking news to the future of the industry, to the issues that affect business travellers and consumers. Twitter fans can follow the daily news round-up with the hashtag #bbcinbrief.
• BBC Travel and LivingSocial Escapes, the online source for handpicked travel deals that can be shared with friends, have partnered to offer a daily deal to locations that are off the beaten track.  The hotels and packages on offer will be definitive of a location and once readers book their getaway with LivingSocial, they can plan their trip in more detail with the help of BBC Travel’s inspiring travel journalism.
• Tim Baynes, a senior executive with the BBC, has recorded his impressions of more than 20 years of travel with sketches and observations from Istanbul to New York to Tokyo.  Each week the blog publishes Drawing From Experience, a new sketch from his collection, gathered over the years in his Moleskine notebooks.