This week: tours with your own private photographer, a hotel reopens in Dubai and new trips to Tibet.

Lhasa, Tibet. Getty Images)
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Package puts photos in professional hands

Do you worry that taking photographs distracts you from the experience of travel? Context Travel, which organises specialised walking tours in 24 cities, has created a new experience for three destinations that combines a private tour with a professional photo shoot.

Now visitors to Berlin, Prague and Amsterdam can take a guided walk and later be presented with a gallery of images by a local professional photographer through a partnership with holiday photography provider Flytographer.

Flytographer itself is a business that lets individual travellers book a photographer for some 85 cities worldwide. After a trip, the travellers are presented with a personalised gallery as a souvenir.

The Context-Flytographer package tours promise to “uncover in-depth and unexpected aspects of the destinations in the company of a local scholar”. These local experts include art historians, writers, architects and gastronomes.

The company hopes that “the unintrusive presence of a local photographer means that participants of private Context walks can focus their full attention on the city and their seminar, safe in the knowledge that their memories are being captured by a professional”.

The package is priced at €540 (Dh2,735) and is based on a three-hour private walking tour combined with a one-hour photo shoot during the walk. Participants will receive 30 high-resolution digital photographs in the form of an online gallery within five days of the tour. Prices for 30 minutes (15 photos) or two hours (60 photos) with the photographer are available on request. Groups are limited to six, excluding the photographer. For more information visit www.contexttravel.com.

Sheraton Dubai creek reopens after refurb

The Sheraton Dubai Creek Hotel & Towers has reopened after a US$50 million (Dh184m) renovation which has seen a top-to-bottom refurbishment of the whole property including all 268 rooms and suites, restaurants and public areas.

The hotel, which opened in 1978, has a re-opening offer of Dh1,020 per room per night including taxes, breakfast, Wi-Fi, and, until April 30, a complimentary upgrade subject to availability. For more information visit www.starwoodhotels.com or call 04 228 1111.

Tour group offers new treks to Himalayas

Mountain Kingdoms, a specialist travel company offering trips to the Himalayas, has launched three new trips to Tibet following an easing of travel restrictions to the region.

The trips depart in August and September and are all two weeks long. They include "Cultural Highlights of Bhutan and Tibet", "Definitive Cultural Tour of Tibet" and "Lhasa and the Phenpo Valley Trek" and cost from Dh15,800 per person excluding international flight (www.mountainkingdoms.com).

* Rosemary Behan