A LOCAL travel company announced its plans to offer more than 100 Italian TT fans the chance to visit the races in November.

Regency Travel has agreed a partnership with the Italian company Cinehollywood to offer a shared charter flight during TT 2012.

The flight, which can carry 148 passengers, will arrive in the Island from Italy on Friday, June 1 and will return on Friday, June 8.

As well as bringing Italian visitors to Manx shores it will enable Isle of Man residents to escape the Island for a week to visit Italy.

Tony Lawrence from Regency Travel said: "We were approached just before TT 2011 about the possibility of sharing a charter flight from Milan.

"The deal enables us to fill up empty legs which are a problem when offering direct charter flights from the Isle of Man.

"This flight is a big boost for the TT and we have already had approaches from other possible destinations across Europe looking to do something similar."

Regency also said that sports operators were looking to bring more groups to the Isle of Man for the motorsport event following increased TT coverage across the world.

Tony continued: "Bringing such flights to the TT does create problems in relation to bed space.

"We have been in talks, for a number of months, with a company called Snoozebox who offer a temporary accommodation solution and we believe this will fill some of the problems and enable us to meet every growing demand."

The company revealed that it was also in talks regarding a possible official TT tented village.

This story is part of isleofman.com's Review of the Year 2011.