Travelblather

I just spotted a hilarious news story that's doing the rounds. My good friends Alastair and Barry at Activities Abroad - a genuinely excellent tour company that I'd recommend to anyone, decided to have a bit of fun with a recent promotional email. And why not? You need to stand out to have any chance of people reading this kind of thing.

They took a look at the names of people who tended to holiday with them.

There has never been a Britney, Kylie, Lianne, Dazza or Shannon on one of their holidays. Whilst the most common names of people who take Activities Abroad holidays are John, Sarah, James and Alice.

The email, headed "Chav Free Activity Holidays", was signed off "Nuff said, innit? The Activities Abroad Team".

It was meant as a bit of fun I imagine - but there was some deeper meaning I think. Let's face it - one of the most oft-repeated holiday nightmares is the one about the 'awful family we ended up stuck with next door'.

Anyway the email has gone seriously viral after being picked up a by a blogger - a different voice - who thought the sentiments expressed in the email were 'a nasty piece of smug class warfare.' 'Don’t ever let anybody tell you that class is not a live issue in Britain,' she states. Unfortunately the blog doesn't have an 'About' page so no real clues to the bloggers' identity.

Alastair fairly robustly responded on the blog - and perhaps made his case a bit to aggressively.

The comments ran and ran. The one that caught my attention was this one though:

The writer called himself 'Wazza'.

I still can't decide if this is someone taking the mickey, but Wassa hits the nail on the head good and proper...

I bet Wazza wouldn't be seen dead on holiday with any of Activities Abroad's nice middle class Sarahs and Johns - just as much as they'd steer miles clear of trips with him. Does that matter? At all? Really.

I wonder how Ali and Barry feel now though? Delighted with the tons of traffic this has generated I imagine. 

There's a great radio interview with Ali on 5 Live with Nicky Campbell too. Hilarious. Nicky tries to sound outraged about it, but everyone ends up laughing. Nuff said. Innit?

It being January, life in the travel sector is hectic. This is the big period of the year when travel cos sell the most product... so I've had little time to post my 2009 Predictions like half the rest of the blogosphere has done. I've been busy writing features...

But here's one prediction that I'm pretty convinced of.

Working as I do at the moment for a Search and Social media company, there's often a real fix on traffic. It's all about greater visibility in Google rankings and driving more traffic to peoples' websites. But having a load more customers isn't any use at all if they don't buy. And having too many customers means those that want to buy sometimes can't because the website can't keep up.

I posted a month or so  back about Richard Carrick CEO of Hoseasons', comments at the  Travolution Question Time event in December.

"If
we improved our conversion rate by 1% that would do the deal for us. We
have enough visitors to our website, we just need to convert them
better."

I remain amazed at how hopeless and frustrating booking engines can be on many travel websites. (I'm not making reference to any specific websites here.)

But, you type in your prefered dates and find there's no availability for the destination you want. So you start again... and almost always have to re-key your preferred dates all over again. And tell them again it's for two passengers not one etc.

Or else you end up with all manner of extras dumped on you that you don't want (Ryanair and Easyjet - I do NOT and never will want stupid speedy boarding or your 'extra travel insurance' - does anyone??)

Or an overwhelming choice with complex filters - leaving you just a tad bewildered.

Improvements are happening, slowly. More companies are displaying ranges of options either side of the dates people select, populating fields as you type, offering alternatives if first preferences aren't available. 

Taking it a step back, it seems to me that people fall into 3 categories

•     I know where I want to go (what hotel I want) and my dates are fixed
•     I know where I want to go - and my dates are flexible
•     I haven't decided where to go - but my dates are fixed

Booking engines should make it easier for you by allowing you to tell them up front which boxes to keep populated when you are doing multiple searchs.

If I were an airline, I'd make it map-based... tied in with the route maps. (Does anyone know of any airlines already doing this?)

So you tell the booking engine your dates and select your departure airport (or even airports? like say London Stansted, Gatwick, Luton and Heathrow) and you're shown the destinations served for that date period. Far more straight forward than wading through a long list of options and then getting the message: "Flights to this destination do not operate during your selected time period." as is often the case for Easyjet and Ryanair.

And finally, however good of bad your booking engine - make it available to me ALL the time. It has to be on every single page. If I want to book... don't make me have to hunt for the booking engine.

And for god's sake - make it work... fast!

So.... for me the winners this year will be the ones that get the basics right in what will be a challenging environment - and the booking engine is the place to start.

Anyone got examples of booking engines they really rate? And of course ones they HATE!

I've just heard that CNN International launches on Freeview on 15th January. The international news channel will more than double its current UK distribution by doing so. I was really excited about this. I am sick to the back teeth of cuddly Bill and smiley Sian on the BBC Breakfast sofa. If ever there was a great example of the BBC dumbing down to the point of total tedium this has to be it. Awful. So I'm gagging for some hardcore news with my cornflakes. Sky News is the only other option, but I often struggle to get decent reception with my old freeview box for some reason. It would also be interesting to watch CNN with an eye on American politics too with Obama about to hit the White House.

So I'm disappointed. For now at least CNN will only be available in the evenings from 9pm to midnight. I hope we get it in the mornings too. I for one would certainly watch.

And Al-Jazeera... if you're reading this. Why not steal a march on CNN and get on Freeview all day too?

I was asked to do a short interview for travel writing website The Written Road It generated an interesting comment from the Editor. I think the debate will continue and it will be lively!

He and I seem to differ radically on whether it's possible to make money writing travel content for websites. Personally, I think for now it's a hopeless cause (that could change, but no time soon in my opinion.) He suggested that it's quite possible - and often easier than writing for print. He suggests that some people he knows earn six figure salaries... which I find frankly, laughable. (Though he then suggests that this kind of money is more about running a niche blog than contributing to others' websites. Maybe it's the guys who run the Written Road who are making six figures??)

There are certainly stacks of travel websites out there trying to fill their pages with content, chasing potential (often pretty elusive) ad revenue and definitely not able to actually pay their writers.  A few examples from Written Road:
Vagablogging: Writers will be expected to write 1-2 posts a week on vagabonding type
topics of their choice; everything from destinations to the latest
online booking tools. The positions are unpaid, but writing for
Vagablogging offers valuable experience and exposure to the travel
writing world.
The Bloggersguide: Our bloggers earn "kudos" points based on their activity on the site
and most importantly the popularity of their posts. The highest ranking
bloggers will be invited to become editors of a particular city section
and the published guide book. Editors share in the advertising revenue
of the site and will be paid royalties on the sales of the guide books.

Stuff like this smacks of people taking advantage of aspiring writers. Writing for nothing is bunk. End of story. In my opinion it's completely devaluing your writing. Do it maybe a handful of times to get some stuff published then stop. (If you can't attract payment for your writing, maybe it's not good enough.)

I've yet to find a travel website that pays a decent amount for writers or cuts a decent deal (that you can actually understand) on the ad-revenue. And I'm not surprised because none that I know of are really making very much money. A good example is Tim Leffel's excellent Perceptive Travel. Slowly he is upping his rates of pay from $50, to $60, to $80. Great stuff. And the product he is offering is genuinely different, well worth reading. But for around 1000 words, $80 is still peanuts compared with print media.