Tim Hughes puts the boot into the highs and lows of the online travel business (with an Australasian/Asian bias) with some blogging about consuming and loving travel thrown in.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Some days I miss being a lawyer
Here is a picture of the email I received today from e-travel blackboard (an Australian travel industry newsletter). Nothing but depressing news. Any one got some good news to make me feel better.
6 comments:
Anonymous
said...
This isn't exactly good news but it'll make you laugh.
Its pretty dire out there and as Tim and I have predicted there will be rationalization in the market. i.e. so companies just won't be around next year this time.
I was in an agency the other day (big UK, exclusively bricks-and-mortar outfit with a few Oz shopfronts... although, they've just closed two of them) and things looked a bit bleak.
I worked there a few years ago and it was always heaving with punters, rows of desks attended by consultants (20 odd), customers out the door and waiting on hold. Was certainly a high-stress but engaging work environment in my day.
Perhaps, I was there before things kicked off the other morning but it was like a ghost town...empty desks, maybe one customer being attended to, more staff working in product and marketing than on the sales floor, phones pretty quiet.
Not sure how they're coping in the UK but I did hear that a few years back they produced some marketing collateral (perhaps for internal comms only) that said "Only spiders trust the web".
How's that for vision?
It says a lot about their approach to online but there are a number of other forces driving its demise her in Oz.
Shame...it was a good business with loyal customers and great service.
The lesson here, I think, is: You can use the web (even if you're scared of it) for much more than transacting and posting product/prices.
This particular business had a great opportunity to create an online community of satisfied customers who would have loved nothing more than to share their experiences/photos/anecdotes (God knows they would bang on about their last trip when they called to book the next...definitely the slide-night generation) on a platform hosted by the agency.
The agency would then have had unique CONTENT (it's king, isn't it?) and a database of enthusiastic story-tellers they could harvest/archive and tag with product.
Brings us back to your "inspiration" post, methinks. Big opps in that space for anyone who wants to have a crack at it.
We all in danger of confusing less food with a famine. Its Friday it is still warm and you can get a bottle of Taylors Promised Land, a Yerring Station or a Wirra Wirra and 250 grams of olives for less than $20. I work as an independent contractor across a number of travel business's and it is not that bad out there. I see alot of people in travel doing a great job under difficult cricumstances. We all came through, the early 90s, Gulf War 1 and 2, Sars etc etc. It is tight out there but it is not dead. It has changed but it is not that different. Most of us have all lost paper money we didnt actually have in property values and super, it is tough not yet tragic, save the doom and gloom incase we really need it.
6 comments:
This isn't exactly good news but it'll make you laugh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we9_CdNPuJg
If that doesn't cheer you up, nothing will.
@Penny - thank you. Schadenfreude and goats. A perfect combination!
Its pretty dire out there and as Tim and I have predicted there will be rationalization in the market. i.e. so companies just won't be around next year this time.
I was in an agency the other day (big UK, exclusively bricks-and-mortar outfit with a few Oz shopfronts... although, they've just closed two of them) and things looked a bit bleak.
I worked there a few years ago and it was always heaving with punters, rows of desks attended by consultants (20 odd), customers out the door and waiting on hold. Was certainly a high-stress but engaging work environment in my day.
Perhaps, I was there before things kicked off the other morning but it was like a ghost town...empty desks, maybe one customer being attended to, more staff working in product and marketing than on the sales floor, phones pretty quiet.
Not sure how they're coping in the UK but I did hear that a few years back they produced some marketing collateral (perhaps for internal comms only) that said "Only spiders trust the web".
How's that for vision?
It says a lot about their approach to online but there are a number of other forces driving its demise her in Oz.
Shame...it was a good business with loyal customers and great service.
The lesson here, I think, is: You can use the web (even if you're scared of it) for much more than transacting and posting product/prices.
This particular business had a great opportunity to create an online community of satisfied customers who would have loved nothing more than to share their experiences/photos/anecdotes (God knows they would bang on about their last trip when they called to book the next...definitely the slide-night generation) on a platform hosted by the agency.
The agency would then have had unique CONTENT (it's king, isn't it?) and a database of enthusiastic story-tellers they could harvest/archive and tag with product.
Brings us back to your "inspiration" post, methinks. Big opps in that space for anyone who wants to have a crack at it.
Got to run...have just had a brilliant idea.
We all in danger of confusing less food with a famine. Its Friday it is still warm and you can get a bottle of Taylors Promised Land, a Yerring Station or a Wirra Wirra and 250 grams of olives for less than $20. I work as an independent contractor across a number of travel business's and it is not that bad out there. I see alot of people in travel doing a great job under difficult cricumstances. We all came through, the early 90s, Gulf War 1 and 2, Sars etc etc. It is tight out there but it is not dead. It has changed but it is not that different. Most of us have all lost paper money we didnt actually have in property values and super, it is tough not yet tragic, save the doom and gloom incase we really need it.
Uhh, the latent demand for travel must be growing every day ?
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