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
So as there isn’t long until the seasons gets started and we are seeing a trickle of releases regarding team news and who everyone is driving for I though I would have post I could update as news becomes available. If I get anything wrong please shout.
I have written this based on information on BTCC.net & Crash.net
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BTCC
As it appears I am on the brink of the dreaded Man Flu, I thought I would help my fellow sufferers spread the word about Man Flu. This crippling disease that regularly spreads through the male population of the country, has been claimed to be ‘the closest thing to death without actually dying’. However others say that to claim a common cold to be Man Flu is an exaggeration on the part of the man – of course this was probably written by a woman.
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Personal
It has been reported in the news today that a six year old boy in Virginia, USA (only in the states) was so desperate to get to school, that having missed the school bus, he decided to take his fathers car and drive himself there instead, apparently he didn’t want to miss PE and breakfast. His mother was sound asleep in bed.
The youngster managed to drive 6 miles (10km) before finally wrapping the Ford Taurus around a lamppost. He lost control of the car whilst weaving though rush hour traffic and over taking slower vehicles. When questioned by the police, he told them that he had learned to drive using video games.
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News
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
Once again sunshine.co.uk is taking to the grid of the prestigious British Touring Car Championship. In 2009 we will be racing a two-car team, using the ex-eurotech Honda Integras of Micheal and Andrew Jordan, the cars will be prepared and run by leading independent race team Techspeed.
- Martyn Bell in the 2008 Team Arkas Racing Vauxhall Astra
Once again Martyn Bell will be carrying the sunshine.co.uk ‘flag’ as he takes to the drivers seat for his fourth season in BTCC. Martyn is looking to build on the success he had last year having gone from a rear wheel drive BMW into the ex-works Vauxhall Astra.
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BTCC
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
Another year, another christmas day lunch and yes, another bunch of crappy Christmas Cracker jokes – I love it. I have noticed in recent years that we don’t just get a joke anymore, we get a general knowledge fact!
Jokes where originally added to Crackers around the 1930’s. Before then they contained love poems or more recently motto’s. The love poems were to accompany the sweets/bon bons that originally went inside the cracker when Tom Smith invented them in the 1850’s.
Here are a selection of the best/worse jokes from the last few days.
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Personal
So how does a Nun stir tea? Personally I have no idea and nor does someone else by the look of it as this question, among a few strange others, was in the referrers for the blog post I wrote in September about the perfect cup of tea. I have yet to find the answer, maybe someone else knows?
Another was asking “Should you squeeze the tea bag?”. Now personally it depends on how long the tea bag has been left to stand in the mug ‘brewing’ If it’s only been in there a couple of minutes then yes, but don’t squeeze the living crap out of it, otherwise it will taste bitter and horrible. Now, if you have accidentally left the tea standing for more than a few minutes with the tea bag in, then I avoid squeezing the bag. I just lift it out and then stir the tea. If it still looks over-stewed, then you might be just aswel making a new one.
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Personal
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
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