The hot air balloon is instead the oldest human flight carrying technology. Today hot air balloons are more advanced and are a major attraction for tourists and people who want a recreation of different kind. Take a hot air balloon ride have the fun riding in different shaped balloons like hot dogs, rocket ships, teddy bears and other commercial products. They are also used a promotional tools. During festivals, carnivals, or other occasions many companies release hot air balloons in the air with imprinted logo of their brand and message. In this manner the message is easily spread to masses. Hot air balloon advertising is considered a fast growing form of advertising today.



The hot air balloon has long been famous for its association with adventurers and explorers, from Richard Branson's self-publicising trans-Atlantic exploits to the pipe-smoking Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's classic novel Around the World in Eighty Days. It marries a sense of wild exploration with an old-school English kind of charm which the motor car and aeroplane have striven to eradicate.

With its wicker basket, colourful silken balloon, and the hot rushes of flame which spurt the whole contraption into action, the hot air balloon recalls a world still new to the Industrial Revolution of the 1850s, where gentlemen (like Mr Fogg) still wear three-piece suits and doff their caps to ladies, carrying top hat and cane.

Its vintage appeal does not make hot air balloon rides obsolete, however. Not only are they a charming alternative gift, they also allow you to see your home town, or discover a new region, from a completely novel perspective. Areas such as Bath, Bristol and the surrounding fields and pastures of the county of Somerset are particularly popular for hot air balloon rides. The gorgeous sandstone stately homes and terraces of Bath suddenly appear like elaborate dolls houses staring at each other across two hills once you are up in the air; the forests and orchards further away from the city limits of Bristol look like a picturebook. So why not make your next gift one to remember, and let its recipients get carried away ? quite literally?