SkyEurope

During the course of carrying out various bookings for our clients we have come across a newly launched airline SkyEurope.


This new airline promotes itself as providing a premium service at low cost and flies from Ireland and the UK to Eastern Europe (and back!).

Best of all to promote their launch they are running a low cost flight (including tax) promotion.

What the headline figure is the figure you actually pay! No hidden charges. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get or in this case pay!)

How often have I been lulled into the Ryanair trap of the £5 flight but at the end of all the taxes and charges it is the £67.85 flight. The SkyEurope

promotion runs to this Friday.

So if your planning a trip to Eastern Europe they are certainly worth considering.

Do you think this is a good tip for finding cheap flights? Well you ain't seen nothing yet! Sign up for our newsletter and receive a FREE copy of our "Guide To Finding the Cheapest Flights" from Hotel Express

How valuable is your Blog?

This is a fun tool to see how valuable your blog is:

How valuable is your blog?

You can see it at the business opportunities blog.

It works on the premise that traffic is not the best indicator of the value of a Blog but rather that the amount of "conversation" as represented by links and indexes represents the value of a Blog.

Basically they have valued each "backlink" or index at slightly over $500 which is the estimated price paid by AOL for WebLogs Inc. divided by the number of non-dupicated backlinks it had when it was purchased.

You can also post the html below on your blog to highlight to the world how valuable or not (in my case) your blog is!

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

But perhaps the true value of your blog is that rather than just being a hub for blog traffic a better estimate might be would anybody care if it disappeared tomorrow?

Problogger has some views on this particular topic, and he seems to drive his argument by occasionally dissappearing from the blogosphere!

PLATO

I have been involved in Plato for the past two years. Plato is a business support forum for SME owners and businesses. The program is excellent and I have come across a number of excellent business trainers.

From a marketing perspective I have found Anne Marie Hanlon of Evonomie excellent. Anne Marie provides an excellent overview of all types of marketing during her presentations.

Evonomie also have an excellent marketing Blog. There's all sorts of great stuff on it.

Have a look at this link for instance and you can get a £30 free ad words voucher. The blog page is here

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10% off Best Available On-Line Rates

When we approach prospective clients, the most common objection we hear is “I get great rates on the internet so why would I pay a fee up front to get rates I can match myself on the internet".

Of course we can answer these objections by showing

how our contracted rates are lower than internet rates

lists of real savings that our members make when compared to best available on-line rates

testimonials from clients.

how our clients pay on check out and not up front so if their travel plans change they can cancel without penalty.

how much time (the most valuable commoidity of all) they can save by using our full free efficient booking service

But ultimately people are still nervous:

will there be availability?

are there really savings to be made?

The concept of paying upfront to receive a service at a later stage is accepted. We pay service contracts on computer systems, retainers to our legal advisors, school fees paid at the start of term. The concept of paying something now to save time and money later seems to be a “harder sell”. This is paricularly true in the Hotel Reservation industry which has traditionally operated on a commission per booking made basis.

Our booking service now has access to a further 6,000 USA hotels which are contracted at 10% off their best available on-line rates.

Interestingly, although our savings in these hotels are less than our savings in our 50% off rack rate contracted hotels, clients understand these internet savings better.

It is amazing how in a relatively short space of time (a few years) the Internet has become the all pervasive "source of best value" – even though in many (if not most) instances it's not.

We will focus on obtaining more discounts off best available internet prices.

Our newest member discount 10% off National Car Rentals best available internet rates is another useful benefit in that regard.

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Skiing

I am not a skier myself but a large number of my friends are.

They have used the company SkiSet UK to prehire their skis and snowboards for their ski holidays.

I'm told their service is very efficient and you can actually save quite a bit against hiring on site.

You may want to have a look.

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Franchises, Sub-distributors, etc.

We’ve been running an authorised sub –distributor program in the United Kingdom for the last year or so.

It is "cheap and cheerful" and costs just £150 to get started (which includes a free membership for the sub-distributor and cd’s of marketing material templates etc.). With the membership alone retailing at £119, it's a very good deal.

The success of our sub-distributors has been variable:

• Those who sell other products and sell this as an additional product have been successful and have generated an excellent incremental income stream with little extra work or sales cost.
• Those who were involved in sales, particularly those with existing contact lists have been successful.
• Those who get involved without sales experience have found the going very tough.
  

I came across an American author Frank J. Rumbauskas. Frank is a sales guru. I know - me too - yet another sales guru and an American one with American ideas that will never work in the UK. But I was attracted to the title of his book “Cold Calling is a Waste of Time – sales success in the information age”.

He also has a site http://www.nevercoldcall.com/

Effectively it puts into short easily read and followed form what so many successful sales people already know:

• you need to have lots of sales channels
• pure cold calling is extremely frustrating, difficult and astoundingly unsuccessful
• calling “qualified” leads – preferably ones who contact you is much more successful.

As an experiment, I had one of our staff put his advice into practice on a “start from scratch basis”, with no help or assistance and guess what it works.

So all our sub-distributors will now receive my strong recommendation that they purchase Franks book and put some, or preferably all of his systems in place.

The establishment of their own low cost mini-marketing systems in place will drive “qualified leads” to contact them looking to purchase.

We are looking forward to a lot of successful new starters in 2008!

If you would like to see more of what we do at Hotel Express please log on to http://www.hotelexpress.ie/.

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Hotel Express is aimed at small and medium sized businesses, who want to reduce time wasted booking hotel rooms and ensure that they get vastly better rates than they can get themselves (either on the internet or through other channels). If this sounds like you then the Hotel Express will save you time and money. The card can also be used for personal travel.

Polls, statistics and such

Polls and statistics

Our most frequent objection to buying Hotel Express international membership is “I get great rates on the internet so why would I pay for membership of Hotel Express International”. Well the answers to that are clear but more about that later.

So we decided to run an on line poll asking the simple question:

Would you pay an annual fee for access to Hotel Rooms at large discounts on internet prices?


The answers:

So 51% of people wouldn’t pay. But of course maybe they don’t travel – so why would they.

12% of people would pay.

37% might pay. Price is most likely the issue here. Yes I would pay but only if it makes financial sense.

Responses by sex

Male 54%, Female 46% ok nothing too startling here. Effectively 50/50









But now on to the good stuff:

Answer breakdown by sex

Interesting

So the no’s are equally divided male and female.

But more women than men are in the maybe category. Are they more price sensitive?

More men than women are in the positive yes category. Perhaps men travel more on business – does the glass ceiling still exist?



Now answer breakdown by age groups




This is quite different to what I had thought.


Of course the 100% no in the 13-17 age category is easily explained, they don’t pay for their hotel rooms anyway and so are not interested in our product.


But look at the Yes responders.


Most of our clients are older and our feeling was that this segment recognized our product as both time and money saving whilst the younger market being more “internet believers” and be sucked in by the internet hype i.e. it says cheap hotel rooms on the top of the web page so they must be cheap.

Of course the truth is not necessarily so. All online hotel bookers earn their fees by one method and one method only – commission. The higher the price of the hotel room you buy the more commission they earn.

How many times have you been lured in to a website with the headline XXXXX hotel €59*. You think what a great rate and you go through the booking process only to discover that the little asterix to the right of €59 meant something either:

- the rate was per person sharing and is based on a double room so the rate is in fact €118

- the asterix indicated “rates from” and in fact for the days you require the rate is actually €120

- there is no availability in the hotel for the days you require or in fact any days (it couldn't be that the website is padding out its site with listings of hotels it doesn't actually have access to, they wouldn't be that devious would they?)

But now you’re in the site you wasted half an hour you’re sick and tired and book the room or another room anyway!

So clearly the younger responders are more internet savvy. They realize that internet hotel booking is a money making activity and not a humanitarian service. They realize that internet rates are not all they're cracked up to be.

The older age groups appear to be intetnet believers when it comes to internet bookings. What it says on top of the page must be true!

So our ideal market would appear to be male in the 18-24 age category. We need pay attention on this category! It is not a market segment we have looked at!

"Show me the data and I'll show you the money"


PS. In answer to the first question as to why someone would pay for membership to Hotel Express when they get "great rates on the internet", the answer is:

• Yes you get good rates on the internet but they fluctuate some days they're great and the next day the room is the price of a small semi detached house. Our rates are fixed and at 50% of rack rate are better than available on the internet.

• With us you pay on check out not up front so if your travel plans change you can cancel without penalty.

• Best of all we do the booking for you – saving you that most valuable of commodities – Time. If you do your own bookings its your time that’s saved. Is it really worth an hour of your time to seek out the best available online rate when our rates are better anyway. If your PA does your bookings - couldn’t that wasted hour be used more productively.

We’re the experts at getting you the best prices – just leave it to us and you get vastly better prices than you can get yourself with no time wasted.

We have 4,500 hotels contracted hotels at 50% of rack rate.

We have a further 6,000 USA hotels contracted at 10% off the best available internet rate.

We have access to a further 50,000 hotels worldwide at the best available industry rate - so if you travel to an area where we do not have a contracted hotel we can still get you a great price.

Your hotel requirements are covered - anywhere, anytime.

Individual membership costs just €169 plus VAT (Ireland) and £119 plus VAT (UK). Our average saving per room per night against best available rate in 2007 was £47. So the savings cover the cost of memebrship in just 2 or 3 nights!

PPS. There are lots of other benefits as well e.g.

10% off National Car Rentals best available online rates worldwide.

FREE membership of National Car Rentals VIP Emerald Club (normally €50)

10% off Gatwick and Heathrow Express

Discounted petrol and diesel at over 300 shell and statoil petrol stations throughout Ireland

that's just to name a few!! Just click here to see the full list of additional benefits

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