Sicily tourism on the rise after royal honeymoon rumours

When it comes to royal wedding buzz, even vague rumors can be good for business. The Isles of Scilly reportedly are on the short list of Prince William and Kate Middleton's honeymoon picks, causing hits on the locales' tourism website to more than triple last week, the BBC reports.

The collection of five inhabited and many uninhabited islands off the southwest Coast of England is home to about 2,000. Despite boasting some A-list celebrity visitors (actor Jude Law is quoted on the Simply Scilly website as calling the islands "the best place on Earth"), the place seems decidedly low-key.

The website touts biking, beach walks and bird-watching as major activities. "The first time you arrive in the Isles of Scilly you may wonder what there is to do," it says. The islands have a variety of lodgings, ranging from self-catering places to The Star Castle, a 16th-century fortress-turned-hotel that won a Great Britain Island Hotel of the Year award in 2008, London's Telegraph newspaper reports.

The couple will honeymoon in a domestic location because "palace officials don't want them going on an expensive foreign break while Britons see their living standards squeezed," London's Daily Mail newspaper reports. The flurry of recent traffic to Scilly's website is from the UK, mainland Europe and the USA, the BBC reports.

Source: USA Today