I recently made a trip to Athens, Greece for a business meeting and flew from London Heathrow T5 using British Airways. I was only staying in Athens for the day, so I took an early morning 06:50 flight on BA0638.
Everything went smoothly as usual, check in, security (quiet due to it being early – 5am) and boarding. I manage to bag myself an exit seat to I had 5 feet of leg room to stretch out in, which was great being a lanky git. I took a picture on my phone before we departed so I could boast on twitter how much legroom I had, it actually shows you what a grubby state the carpet was in. The crew carried out the usual safety demo and started ‘securing’ the cabin for takeoff. Seat belts on, seat backs up and phones off etc. The two teenage lads next to me obviously had hearing issue and actually continued to text until we left UK airspace! I did tell them they had to stop, however all I received was blank stares. The female flight attendant seated in the jump seat 3 feet from them also failed to notice what they were up to. Not wanting to cause a scene I promptly fell asleep.
I awoke from my much needed slumber about 1 hour from the end of the flight, as I had missed breakfast one of the crew kindly offered me a hot drink, which was appreciated. As there wasn’t long to go till we arrived I decided start watching a movie on my iPad.
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Travel
Before you start to read this, I feel that I should explain, this is a true story and I haven’t made it up. Once you have read it I would be really grateful if you could like and share my facebook group. Thanks in advance.
In 1999 I was fortunate enough to spend 3 months in Australia. I visited a good friend for a few weeks before, heading off to backpack up the East coast and to visit the Northern Territory.
Whilst on my travels I met up with a pair of young ladies from Holland and a guy from Switzerland called Thomas. We travelled together for a while before Thomas headed off in a different direction, leaving me with the two girls from Holland. Sadly I cannot remember their names, which is shocking as I ‘backpacked’ with them for about 3-4 weeks.
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Personal, Travel
I love going on holiday. You would expect me to say that but I really do! Nothing can beat getting away from it all to a lovely holiday destination, with the family, where we can stretch out and relax by the pool or on a beautiful beach. That said, I find the travelling aspect of going on holiday a bit of a nightmare. But the stress factors can be reduced so I thought I’d share with you my top stress-busting tips.
#1 Check your passports
I don’t know how many times I have come across people who have lost their passports, picked up another member of the family’s passport, or turn up at the airport with an out-of-date passport. Ideally you should check your documents when you book your holiday. I also double check everything the day before and on the day of departure – better safe than holiday-less!
#2 Check your tickets and money
Again I do this the night before and before I leave for the airport. Next to your passports, the next important things are your tickets and money. No tickets = no holiday! No money = no fun!
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Travel
Those of you that know me are probably aware by now that I am off to the US of A next week (27th June), minus the wife and children (woo) for a week to go storm chasing! When I say storms I am talking about supercell type storms that produce severe thunderstorms and more importantly TORNADOS! Everyone has a list of things they want to do before they peg it and for quite some time – probably about the time the movie Twister came out, I have wanted to experience/see a tornado up close and personal (i.e. at least a quarter of a mile away).
A couple of months ago I found an online company selling spaces on tours set up specifically to chase storms. As luck would have it there was a single space left on a tour that fell into a small window I was free in June/July. Having gained permission from the wife, who laughed at me and said I was mad, I booked the space that was left and a return flight to match.
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Storm Chasing, Travel
I have just had to close one of my credit cards for the most obscure reason… I have used it too much. Ok it’s worse than that, much worse. I have used it too much and made to many payments to it. MBNA who ‘did’ look after my Virgin Atlantic American Express, have told me that I have broken the terms and conditions by using my card too much.
When they approached me last year I told them that I was in the habit of clearing my balance each month – saves interest, so based on this the advisor recommended the Virgin Atlantic Black Card. It has a higher interest rate an annual fee of £115. The benefit being that I would receive 2 virgin miles for every pound I spend, or 4 miles for each pound when I use the card to buy Virgin Atlantic flights. Being a regular flyer with Virgin it meant I could add miles monthly to my Flying Club membership. These ‘miles’ can ultimately be used to book Virgin flights with ala Air Miles.
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Personal, Travel
It has been announced this week that Kiss Flights, the controversial charter flight-only operator which seemly rose from the ashes of the XL collapse, has been sold - before it has even operated a single flight. Founded in the later part of 2008, Kiss pitched themselves into the hole in the market that XL Airways left behind in September 2008. With a very identical but much reduced route plan, it was hoped that Kiss would help agents sell destinations that XL serviced before its demise.
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News, Travel
When I first started out in travel I worked in various call centres, selling on a commission only basis. i.e. No salary, so if you didn’t sell anything you didn’t earn anything. Fortunately I had a knack for selling so I was able to make decent money.
Now when you spend all day answering the phone you quickly get to know what a customer’s standard answer or question is going to be and if they are ‘playing the game’, which is ringing around and trying to get you to undercut the last guy in order to save themselves a few quid. This ‘game’ wasn’t something I got into as they were generally wasting my time, after all, usually they would do is ring the next number in their list and get a competitor to undercut you. As all travel agents were selling from the same system we all had pretty much the same base price.
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Travel
As the value of the pound against the euro continues to crumble holidaymakers in the UK are looking to non-euro destinations for cheaper holidays. So if you have a travel website or are thinking of building one in 2009 then you need to be thinking Turkey & Egypt. Both are outside the euro and pose excellent value for those looking to save money whilst abroad.
Given the choice, I personally would go for Turkey, only because Egypt’s flight program is a bit lighter since XL Airways went bust. There are other airlines stepping in to the fil the gap, however I am sure that many are waiting to see how the travel industry fairs in the traditional January early booking period.
If you havent’ already, don’t forget to check out sunshine’s awesome affiliate area.
Internet, Travel
I had planned to post this yesterday and ran out of time and I have now been pipped to the post by Travolution. Here it is anyway:
- sunshine.co.uk will become the largest, purely online travel agent selling cheap holidays to the masses.
- Despite the state of the economy people will still go on holiday, however they will spend less, resulting in good volumes but lower turnover when based on, year on year sales.
- Non web based travel companies will launched websites in a bid to widen their reach and web savvy companies will spend more time and money investing in Search Engine Optimisation and online bookable websites and they will spend less on PPC.
- Agents will look at widening their product range selling more ancillaries and destinations they wouldn’t normally deal with.
- A swathe of travel agents not willing to adapt to the changing market will close. This includes high street agents who still think the Internet is a fad! Yes they do exist.
- Ryanair to go bust – well we can hope can’t we!
2009 is going to be a challenging year for everybody in travel regardless of how ‘good’ you are but even more so for those are slow to respond to the ever price conscious consumer.
Travel
As you can probably appreciate with the current economic climate the travel press is full of doom and gloom. Experts are predicting that over 50 airlines will have failed this year along with countless tour operators and travel agents.
One article however jumped out at me whilst reading an issue of Travel Bulletin the other day. In a time where we – travel companies - should be worrying about adapting to the market, lowering our overheads and streamlining our business, you don’t expect to read that retail travel agents have far bigger things to worry about. Their backs! Read more…
Travel
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