January 14, 2007 at 12:01 am
· Filed under General Travel
On the 1st February 2007 Gordon Brown’s new Air Passenger Duty rates come into effect. This means that even if you booked you flight before the new rates were annouced and are flying on or after the 1st Feb you still have to pay the new rates.
How much is it?:
Economy class flights in Europe, including internal UK flights, £10
I have been blog tagged. Thanks kindly to Dan for slapping me with this one. Dan is an Affiliate Manager for Alpharooms, although I am not sure what he manages… :P
December 18, 2006 at 9:01 pm
· Filed under Marketing
Today HW was contacted by a marketing agency that was looking to place banner ads on behalf of a client. Until now we have never allowed third party banner ads on the site, excluding the small logos that are found on the hotel listing pages. As a trial for 2007 we decided that rather than sell Banner ads by impression we would sell via a limited number of slots.
I informed the agency that we would be happy to carry their client’s banners at our fixed slot price. Once I told him how many impressions he could expect to get for his money, he then proceeded to quote me his stats regarding the traffic on our website. Now I appreciate that there are a few different pieces of software out there that report back traffic stats and website analytics, but I am sure that anyone’s own logs carry more weight than any third party program?
Last Friday I took part in a Golf Day at Oak Park Golf Course organised in advance of my friend’s impending wedding day. Being from a family - The Ashworth’s - of golfers it is natural that they have a ‘Cup’ named in their honor - The Ashworth Cup.
Imagine my surprise at winning the ‘Cup’ from the Ashworths, when I hadn’t picked my clubs up for about 3 months. Imagine their surprise when I claimed the family cup for my own. I can still taste the victory! Bring on the re-match.
November 17, 2006 at 12:18 pm
· Filed under Misc, Computers
So how do you convince a now 15 year old that downloading “free” music and other choice programs to save a few quid is not a good idea? Maybe getting infected with spyware might stop them. The type of spyware that requires a full reformat and losing all of said downloaded material. As there are just too many infections to pick material out from. Sadly no. They go straight back to whence they came to get back the music and files you just scrubbed because they ‘need it’. Less than 12 hours later you’re back to square one. But it’s ok, they were ‘careful’ this time, so it can’t have been their fault. *bang head against wall*
Four complete reformats and a new hard drive later, teenager finally realises that maybe he doesn’t need to download music quite as much as he thought and turns over a new leaf. Maybe me refusing to ever fix the PC again had something to do with it? :P
November 12, 2006 at 6:18 pm
· Filed under General Travel
One of the most frequently asked question I get from my friends is “Can you find me a cheap holiday too x”. Bearing in mind I haven’t been a ‘Travel Agent’ for about 4 years. It’s like asking a pilot where you can book cheap flights.
So I thought I would write down what I tell them whenever they ask, to save me repeating myself over and over when it gets to holiday booking time.
Through Jan, a member on our forum we got hooked up with a British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) driver by the name of Martyn Bell. 2006 saw Martyn and his team competing in their first season of the BTCC. No stranger to motor racing, previously Martyn was a driver in the Kumho BMW Championship, BTCC being the next step up the ladder.
November 11, 2006 at 6:00 pm
· Filed under General Travel
What stresses you out when you go on holiday? The accommodation? The flight? Apparently, we are all tearing our hair out about the smaller things such as, car hire, visas, car parking… you get the picture. This is according to Galileo the global travel distribution system company.
Not surprisingly with the increase in DIY holidays – booking your accommodation and flights separately – the most stressful single item to emerge from the research was Transfers.
