On your marks, Jetset, go (well next year we will)

I have gone from feeling contempt for offline agents that have been slow to move online to almost pity. Clearly Flight Centre has made huge mistakes online (as we discussed here). Now we have a better one. Large Australian franchise network - Jetset Travel - have announced boldly a plan to "step up its online offering with the launch of a fully bookable website next year".

Unbelievable. Simply Unbelievable.

10 years after the launch of Expedia, 9 years after the float of Travel.com.au on the ASX, 7 years after the birth of comparative shopping engines with the launch of Sidestep and 6 years after the launch of Wotif, Jetset have announced that they will have a site up and running by mid next year. The CEO is competing with himself for understatements of the century when he says that Jetset is "late to market...and..to some extent playing catch up" and even better "The lack of a bookable online engine was my first priority".

That truly is like one dinosaur up to their nose in tar, with a tsunami, meteor and earthquake all on the way, turning to another and saying "next year I am going to grow an opposable thumb"

Here is the full article thanks to Travelweekly.