Coincidentally I got into contact with Bianca Maoua of the Dutch Branch of Travel Counsellors. A thriving franchise that is branching out despite the travel agent walk or kick out all over the world.
It was a very nice first encounter and I do believe this is the future alternative for the High Street Travel Agent.
Off course I’m biased, because I’m so used to the home working travel agent already: In my former life I worked 24/7 and had to change travel itineraries the very last moment (usually between 10 PM and 2.30AM). We then used a lady whose name I’ve forgotten sadly, but who was located in LA and worked there from home and from an office and helped us with airline leg scheduling and Hotel reservations when all Travel Agents here in The Netherlands were closed. This was in the late 80ies and early 90ies, way before Internet, but she had acces to GDS and could work with it and, more importantly knew how to trick the system…the now not permitted reverse your leg trip and so. Later I used a guy wo could tweak the same GDS with … just an embryonal PC…
About Travel Counsellors
Founded : 1994 by Chairman David Speakman
200 staff are located at the company’s Headquarters in the UK headquarters in Bolton. 40 more in overseas offices.
Over 1,000 home based self employed agents, located throughout the UK along with Ireland, the Netherlands, the US, Germany, South Africa and Australia. Further overseas expansion is planned. 83% of the agents are women, 77% have children, 71% are aged between 31 and 50 with an average of 19 years experience. Before joining Travel Counsellors 60% were either managers, deputy mangers or owners of high street / retail travel agencies
The company’s turnover has increased from its 1993 level of £510,000 to £245m for the financial year ending October 31 2008.
What they sell:
Packages represent 20% of total sales, including traditional package holidays from the (UK) big four. Tailor made holidays are about two thirds (65%) of our business, booked either with specialist tour operators or dynamically packaged using our own award winning Phenix system. The remaining 15% consists of cruise and business travel bookings.
Impressive! Even if you are net savvy they can save you tremendous time! They claim their Phenix system makes them better informed than any customer shopping on the internet….
I do permit myself a comment: Their site needs loads of more content! Syndication perhaps?
And a question: Are there genuine travel agent review sites out there?
Added September 23, 2009
Featured in VoyaLinks by Merill of Voyage Gee
Luzinterruptus.com is a Spanish collective of artists specialized in Interventions. This time they draw attention to public urinating. By installing “public toilets” in places they chose by their noses, easy to find places where the smell tells, they hope to remind people to abstain from this anti social behavior. I second!
What annoys us is seeing how during the day and nigh people urinate anywhere in the streets without any embarrassment. They just walk along, turn round, zip down and, even in crowded places, seen by passers-by, let go.
Along San Ildefonso square and surrounding side streets in Madrid, Spain they installed 80 male urine containers, the ones used in hospitals, filled then with yellow water and added a little light. A powerful poetic protest I would say.
Photographs from Gustavo Sanabria who also maintains a Flickr Luzinterruptus set
Via a wonderful site unurth – street art which specializes in street art from all over the world. Definitely worth a look!
Rubik’s Clubwich
Thought we needed a smile after the seriousness of creativity from Chaos.
Came across this blog Insane Wiches, Insane Sandwich Fun, from which I’ll share a few good ones. He (or she?) is on Twitter as well: @insanewich, but not very communicative.
Dadwich
And finally this very clever
Wino Sandwich
Regular readers know I publish on the side at Trendhunter, a cool community that scores the net in search of everything trendy.
Actually if you are really curious to know into what direction fashion, style, architecture, design, hotels, marketing, advertizing and many more topics are moving: Trendhunter offers you a daily one stop opportunity to remain up to date.
Like me, you could consider to become a free member and enjoy the thrill of a hyper trendy and creative community.
Being part of that community enables me to share with you a sneak preview of a very interesting upcoming book by the chief of the tribe, Jeremy Gutsche, Exploiting Chaos.
Jeremy is becoming one of the trend gurus by his own of this era. More than 30,000 members of the community contribute he skillfully knitted together contribute trends to the TrendHunter site. Like no one else Jeremy has his finger on the pulse of the crowds, or the tribes like Seth Godin likes to call us. He offers great insight and a chance to reflect on the near future.
DID YOU KNOW THAT Hewlett-Packard, Disney, Hyatt, MTV, CNN, Microsoft, Burger King, and GE all started during periods of economic recession? Periods of uncertainty fuel tremendous opportunity, but they also reshuffle the deck and change the rules of the game. That’s where EXPLOITING CHAOS comes in…
Read in the Sneak Preview about the fast changes that affect big companies and how small entrepreneurs were and will be able to thrive on new ideas.
The book will be available in the bookstores from September 1, 2009.
You can now download a 45 page Sneak Preview for free!
Recently, after a testing 6 months with 3 numbers, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has launched number 4 of its interactive multimedia on-line in-flight magazine iFly. It is available in the Dutch and English language.
It is not KLM’s intention to scrap the paper magazine (yet?), but it is an interesting experiment. The topic presented to the viewer are based on the viewers behavior and interests, for instance the time a viewer spends on a certain topic.
An very interesting format for future blogs and hotel sites as well. Media gurus love the clickrate and time spent on the site….
Update.
I was a bit surprised not having found more on the subject.
Then I found this post of Junta42.com.
After each new issue they send an e-mail to their subscribers.
* After their third issue, KLM has found that iFly is their best marketing tool ever used to sell repeat tickets.
* The average reader spends 20 minutes reading the magazine.
* 20% read the entire magazine.
* Frequent flyers are heavy users of the magazine.
* The click-through rate of iFly is higher than any other online campaign from KLM.
Postcard of Scheveningen Beach dating before 1900
Scheveningen is a suburb of The Hague and the main beach resort of The Netherlands.
1906 Postcard - Scheveningen beach with the Kurhaus
Since we enjoy a wonderful summer here in the Hague, I’m remembering the typical good old cane High Back Scheveningen Beach Chair that used to be all over the Scheveningen beaches. These chairs disappeared completely from the Scheveningen Beach scene in the 70ies.
One problem was that they are very heavy. You need two persons to move them. The second problem is they were a bit unstable. With a bit of wind, they are easily blown over.
However, they had two huge advantages:
- Wind protection.
By their design they already offered a nice protection against the wind. If you added a towel inside in the back the protection was complete.
- They offered you a nice feel of privacy: No strangers’ eyes burning in your back.
Dreamy Scheveningen Beach Postcard - Undated
I’ve grabbed some historic postcard pictures from the internet to make my point while I was in search of modern equivalents for this wonderful beach chair, but couldn’t find a decent one. That is strange as the modern materials for outdoor chairs are so flexible. High Back beach chairs still do have a function as the following postcard fro a German Beach proves:
Postcard from a recent G8 Top
A recent G 8 top postcard with several World Leaders on a Northern German beach in its own model of a high back beach chair. It is much heavier, hence it is not feasible for Scheveningen where you have to adapt to the wind direction frequently, but a swiveling high back maybe?
So Chair designers out there: If the Germans can do this, why can’t the Dutch do this?
The good people, more precisely P.Ling, at Uptake’s Travel Industry Blog ranked me among their top 15 Hotel Blogs. Thank you P. Ling at Uptake!
For me a reason to look again at one of my favorite posts: Blogging Hotel Insiders. I had 40 Blogging hotel insiders. My choice was a bit wider on the one hand and a bit narrower on the other hand: I did not include some Travel Industry Blogs. In addition there are still a some to be added. So I updated my post and put it in the sidebar as one of my favorite posts.
Then, thanks to @CleverClogs of Clever Clogs – what’s in a name, see below:-) – I found ClusterUrl and as a test put the 15 mentioned by Uptake in a Cluster: Top 15 Hotel Blogs and Bloggers according to Uptake.
About ClusterUrl
ClusterUrl is a simple mash up to avoid having your browser open with umpteen screens. Instead you can put them in a Cluster and refer back to the cluster and share various links with your friends or readers. For the time being I have this one published at the bottom of my sidebar.
Then Amplify found me and had me fiddling around with it. Now what is Amplify? It is a Multi User Wordpress blog where you can dump clippings of sites you are browsing for later reading or for sharing via Twitter. It has some nifty features and it is free. So it is a ClipLog or abbreviated a Clog. As a Dutchman, or inhabitant of Cloggieland as my foreign friends tend to tease me, this new term appeals to me. From now on I’m a Clogger. Look it up! Here is my little Amplify stream.
About Amplify
Amplify was developed by the same company that created Clipmarks.com. Clipmarks, based in New York City, is majority-owned and operated by its employees. Forbes Media holds a minority interest in the company. The Company’s philosophy on information sharing is comprised of three main principles: (i) people can do a better job than algorithms of filtering the massive amount of information that’s available on the web; (ii) serendipitous discovery is often more compelling than information organized by topic; and (iii) limiting the length of shared content allows people to learn about more topics than they would otherwise have time or patience for.
Amplify was created to serve the needs of two audiences that are not the focus of Clipmarks.com: (i) Twitter users; and (ii) Groups.
Post Alia
Both have in common that they draw traffic away from your blog on the one hand. On the other hand it can draw traffic to your blog from the specific community….
The same problem you have with syndicating your content.
A pregnant example of problems with syndication is Uptake’s post. If I look at Technorati, it is not Uptake who links to me, but PhocusWright where they syndicated this post…although tecnorati is fast sliding in oblivion when it continues to behave so wobbly as it does now already for months..Apparently PhocusWright has a higher Technorati ranking than Uptake today… Nowadays Wordpress uses Google for it’s track backs. So in my WP Dashboard Google gives the original track back. You see? I’ll never understand SEO….
I was just talking about the Dutch influencing the UK and the US in the 17nd century. But we also influenced the Russian Czar Peter the great who lived a couple of years in The Netherlands to learn the craft of ship building. The wooden Czar Peter house in Zaandam, north of Amsterdam where he lived is still a tourist attraction today.
This cultural bond with Russia has recently culminated in Russian president Medvedev opening the Amsterdam branch of the Russian St Petersburg Hermitage museum, the Hermitage Amsterdam together with our Queen Beatrix. In its first month it drew over 100,000 visitors, which is not bad for a medium sized museum.
Now I would like to introduce you to a young Russian Designer Dima Loginoff. He wants to bring Russian lace back to Amsterdam in the form of a concept of the Lace Hotel. I take it he has looked a bit to Dutch designer Marcel Wanders who also thinks lace. As I quoted in a prior “The future is back to knitting” and lace is the result of a sort of knitting isn’t it?
Lace-Hotel-Amsterdam-by-Dima Loginoff- Interior
Dima’s concept won the prize “design without limits” at the Design Debut Contest 2008 in St. Petersburg, While Russian lace should cover the facade of a traditional Amsterdam canal house a textile ceiling is provided for in the lobby and restaurant, huge historical redesigned prints of Diane de Poitiers and Gabrielle d’Estrées. So the circle is full:-)
Our small luxurious 3 suites hotel is the Siamese twin of our own terraced townhouse. It’s front door is always closed and I always receive our guests personally. Sometimes I receive several just married couples after their wedding party in the middle of the night (early in the morning). Also this time…
Couple 1 had the key already, because they had stayed the night before their wedding.
Couple 2 had not arrived yet.
It was approx 02.15 AM
I had fallen asleep in my chair…watching some night movie.
My wife was in bed already and woke me up: “Darling, I believe they’ve arrived. I believe I hear something next door”
I listened and said “No, I don’t hear anything… not possible…they didn’t ring the doorbell…I would have known”
A few moments later:
“Ring Ring” the telephone. “Yes we are Couple 2 and, err, I’m now taking a bath, but we thought this is kind of strange, because we believed we would be welcomed personally and we didn’t see anybody”
Me: “I’m glad you called! Yes you are right it is our intention to always welcome everybody personally!..I have several things here ready for you” (champagne and sandwiches that I subsequently served to the room)…
Turned out Couple 1 had checked themselves in and left the front door ajar without them or me noticing and Couple 2 had thought there was an electric door opener. Luckily they had taken the correct suite ….
In my previous post I promised to share two books I’m currently reading.
Recently, on occasion of their return to Texas, we offered a farewell dinner to an expat couple that had resided with us as long stay guests. They concluded their stay in The Netherlands of over three years with the observation that there are more similarities in character between Americans and Dutch that they would have believed. They also pointed me to a recent book of Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World, that gives some background explanation.
It is an epic story about the discovery of New Amsterdam and it’s early years as a settlement of the Dutch West Indies Company (in Dutch Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie). The book is based on historic material kept under dust for ages, but popped up in Albany, New York, of all places. For over 25 years there sits a historian who is in the process of translating over 12,000 Dutch language documents dating back to the first half of the 17nd century. The Dutch were too tidy and destroyed most of their West India Company’s archives so it is a sort of wonder this new material popped up. It is known as The New Netherland Project or NNP. Do visit their site as they have a wealth of material!
I learned Englishman Henry Hudson discovered New Amsterdam on commission of the Dutch East India Company (VOC or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie). On a former trip he had discovered Newfoundland on commission of the British Muscovy Company, in search of a northern passage to the India. He had hoped that via the rivers Hudson or Connecticut he could reach the great lakes and from there there was a passage to India.
When buying The Island at the Center of the World I stumbled on the book Going Dutch, How England Plundered Holland’s Glory, by English writer Lisa Jardine.
Coincidentally Robbert Russo penned an insightful column for the New York Times Going Dutch about how an American looks at Dutch society.
Lisa uses the subtitle more as a eye catcher than as a flag covering her cargo: She describes the early 17nd century more from a view of an art historian. How thinkers, architects, landscape architects, sculptors and painters from the low countries influenced the English courts. How members of the Royalists party got refuge in The Hague during Cromwell’s reign and how the various European courts especially those who were not in the Roman Catholic league like the Spanish were related, intermingled and intermarried and tried to cooperate in their struggle against the Spanish. All up to the year 1688 when William and Mary took over the English throne.
It is really fun to read the two books together. If you’re interested in Dutch, US and/or UK history both books are a must read!
