Tuesday 23 January 2018

Running the Right way.



Half way through my training for the Hampton Court Half Marathon.  Seeking inspiration, I sought Mo Farah on YouTube.  And there he was, gliding around the track, effortlessly.

And the it struck me. Why do they always run round the track in an anti-clockwise direction?  Here's why...

According to a certain Paul Cartledge, professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge, at Olympia and elsewhere in Greece both the running track and the hippodrome were straight, using up-and-back "laps" and even in the early modern Olympics - Athens (1896 and 1906), Paris (1900), St Louis (1904) - athletes ran clockwise.

At the time of the 1896 Games, most track races in England were also run clockwise and at Oxford and Cambridge University, both important athletic institutions, races also ran clockwise  (Oxford until the late 1940s and Cambridge until the 1950s)

But a number of countries began to settle instead on the American custom of running counter-clockwise... 

One theory is that early races were run on horse tracks, which ran in that direction. 

Anti-clockwise became the norm by the early 1900s and the Olympic organisers came under pressure to conform. The change was compete world-wide between between 1950 and 1954 and Roger  Bannister's four-minute mile was run in the anti-clockwise direction.

So we have the Americans to thank it seems – but does running anti-clockwise make a difference to left or right-legged athletes?

Answers on a postcard please.

Thursday 6 March 2014

Six Travel Trends that will shape our marketing


SIX TRAVEL TRENDS TO shape our marketing for 2014 and beyond

Six travel trends that are going to shape our marketing in 2014 beyond...


The influence of the ‘millenials’

The Millennials are those born since 2000.  These 18- to 30-year-olds of growing importance to the travel industry and have some key characteristics and will shape the future of travel propositions for the industry. Specifically, the millenials are more ethnically diverse, more interested in urban than resort destinations, more likely to travel to follow interests or activities and more likely to travel with friends in organized groups.


The continuing growth of the Silver market

The Silver market is estimated to comprise 1.3 billion to 1.6 billion people worldwide by 2015. Of crucial importance to this group is customer service. The senior group travels primarily for rest and relaxation on either short or longer stay trips and prefer quieter and less congested destinations. Not only is the senior market the world’s wealthiest group – it is also the most demanding and show very little tolerance to poor or average levels of customer service.


An increase in conspicuous leisure

The ubiquitous use of social media and with it the widespread sharing of photos with friends, families and colleagues – has fostered a trend in conspicuous leisure.  Experiences  will become a ‘social currency’ signalling social status through unique experiences rather than through consumer goods.  These experiences will most likely include owning a holiday home, having the freedom to work from home, taking holidays to exotic destinations and enjoying active experiences

The rise of ‘creative tourism’

Creative tourism is travel that provides an engaged and authentic experience and that can make a connection with those who live and work in the tourism destination.  The ‘creative’ tourist differs from a ‘cultural’ tourist in that he or she is active and interacts with the locals.


The strength of luxury travel

Luxury travel continues to be a robust segment of the travel industry and has remained recession-proof over the last five years as other sectors have struggled.  There are now literally millions of millionaires and the number of affluent households are projected to double between 2012 and 2020. Despite the growth of the Asian (and particularly the Chinese) market, it is still projected that U.S., Japanese and European travellers will dominate the luxury travel market until 2020


The emergence of  multi-generational travel

The older the original baby-boomers get, the more family travel they are doing with a lot of that travel planned around milestone events. The multi-generational market is about trading memories, with convenience and value.

Most destinations have struggled when it comes to providing services and amenities that appeal to six and 60 year-olds alike, but some cruise lines have already taken a leadership position in catering to the multigenerational travel market.


Thursday 18 April 2013

Bitcoin and other Mathematical Currencies



If you haven’t heard of Bitcoin yet, then you really need to get with it. 

Confused already?  You will be. Read on..

What is Bitcoin?

 Bitcoin is a crypto-currency based on mathematic equations. Bitcoin is the most widely used open-source peer-to-peer "cryptocurrency" that you can send over the Internet without a bank or a middleman.  Today, you can buy near enough anything with Bitcoin and websites exist to buy most things using Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency and as such it doesn't exist in the physical world (although you might also want to have a look at Casascius..)

Bitcoin is decentralised and therefore has no central bank such as the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve to regulate it. Unlike Sterling or the USD (which in fact is no longer backed by anything intrinsic such as gold and therefore can be printed over and over again) Bitcoin has a finite amount of coins that can be produced and so the supply of 'money' in circulation will be fixed.

So is Bitcoin is going to take over from ‘real currency’?

Bitcoins are bought and sold at a variable price against the value of other currencies and recently Bitcoin has appreciated rapidly in relation to existing "fiat" currencies including the US dollar, euro and British pound.

In January a unit of Bitcoin cost around $15 (Bitcoins can be broken down to eight decimal places for small transactions). By April 11th, it had settled at $179, taking the value of all Bitcoins in circulation to $2 billion.


According to Reuters, banks such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs visit Bitcoin exchanges as often as 30 times a day while employees of international banks and other major financial organizations are also now showing interest in the Bitcoin markets as well.

What are the other mathematical and crypto-currencies?

Bitcoin is currently the leading mathematical currency and whilst it crashed badly recently, many ambassadors of Bitcoin are quite sure that it’ll rise again very soon. Some of the more common alternative crypto-currencies in existence are:

BTC Bitcoin -        The first, strongest and most accepted
LTC Litecoin -       The next closest competitor to BTC; it claims to be faster than BTC
NMC Namecoin -  Used for alternative peer2peer domain system
PPC PPcoin         Compatibile with BTC miners
Ripple                     BitCoin alternative developed by OpenCoin

If you really want to understand it, read about Bitcoin here and the impact that mathematical currencies may have on the financial world in the future here!


Thursday 28 March 2013

Passionate Marketing - it's not what you do but the way that you do it!



In August 2011, sofa retailer Seriously Sofas opened its doors for the first time.  Twenty months later they will be opening their new expanded shop with the UK’s first FamaLiving concept store – a partnership with Spanish independent upholstery manufacturer, Fama.

So how did this come about and what lessons can we learn?

Lesson 1. Be Innovative

Seriously Sofas is an independent retail specialist focusing on bespoke UK and customisable European upholstery.  They started working with Fama 15 months ago when they wanted to add to their European product range.  Fama products are well priced, nicely designed, colourful, flexible and different and they knew we could sell it in the UK.  They experimented with colours, fabrics, designs and customisation - something few of their other stockists had asked them to do before

Within 12 months, Fama products became some of the best selling pieces.

Lesson 2. Get Talking

Spanish upholstery manufacturer Fama is an independent owner/managed business, established in 1972.  They have developed a reputation for comfortable, stylish furniture.  Over the last two and a half years Fama have opened a number of FamaLiving concept stores across Europe and North America. 

In January, Seriously Sofas took the chance to meet up with Fama’s owners while visiting the furniture show at Birmingham’s NEC and used the opportunity to closely inspect a wider range of their products.  Despite the language differences, they were impressed by Fama's attention to service and quality and similarly, they by Seriously Sofas genuine passion for what they do. 


Lesson 3. Believe in your business

Although working at opposite ends of the furniture business (Fama a manufacturer – Seriously Sofas a retailer) it was clear that they both shared the same ethos.

Both believe that it’s not just about business – it’s more than that.  It’s about putting the customer first and only selling it if it’s right for the customer. 

Lesson 4.  Be Passionate!

Fama have chosen Seriously Sofas as their partner for their very first FamaLiving store in the UK and will be opening FamaLiving London, from their newly extended premises in Kingston, south west London, on 25th April 2013.
  
Fama chose to work with Seriously Sofas not because they were their largest stockist, nor because they sold the most pieces for them.  They chose to work with them because they shared their ideals and their passion.

Believe in what you do, do it well, and do it with passion.  Ole!


Friday 8 February 2013

Laker's Skytrain - The first No Frills Airline

Skytrain to America

Sir Freddie Laker pioneered the idea of cheap air travel and introduced the first ‘no-frills’ concept to aviation with his ‘Skytrain to America’ in 1977.  

This entrepreneurial venture was so ahead of its time that rival airlines conspired successfully to crush his business.

Before Skytrain, international flights were for the rich. After the Second World War it was thought that competition between airlines might lead to a dereliction of passenger safety, and so the market was strictly regulated by the International Air Transport Association.

IATA allowed state airlines to maintain a monopoly offering identical services at high prices. (By 1971 the only exception was charter airlines catering for the growing package holiday trade. Under an IATA rule intended to preserve the monopoly, charter passengers needed six months' membership of an "affinity group" whose main purpose was not travel, groups such as the Dahlia Society or the Left Hand Club – see previous post)

Laker, whose airline was being regularly fined for carrying large numbers of bogus Rose Growers to America, came up with an easier system. Passengers who wanted a cheap flight could queue for a ticket at the airport, just as they would at a railway station before taking a train. It took six years of campaigning and lobbying to persuade the British and American governments to agree to the idea.

Queuing for  Skytain tickets at Victoria

The first Skytrain took off for New York in September 1977. Laker offered no frills but at £59 it cost a third of any other ticket. He made £1 million profit in the first year, and by 1980 was carrying one in seven transatlantic passengers.

The other major airlines soon took action, offering cheap fares for the first time and when Pan Am cut the price of its regular service by two-thirds in October 1981, Laker's passengers deserted him.

And then, in February 1982, Laker Airways went into receivership with debts of £264 million. The collapse was so sudden that its flights were turned round in mid-air!  At first it seemed that Laker had overstretched, borrowing heavily to finance 15 new planes just as the pound fell against the dollar.

But in 1983 the liquidators Touche Ross began an anti-trust action in America, claiming a billion dollars from 10 major airline and the allegations went beyond predatory pricing. British Airways, Pan Am, TWA and Lufthansa were all said to have colluded to plot Laker's downfall.
In particular, several airlines had threatened the manufacturer McDonnell Douglas that they would buy elsewhere if it rescheduled Laker's debt. (The Justice Department found the evidence in a school project by the daughter of a McDonnell Douglas director!)

The action threatened BA's privatisation, and in 1985 the defendants settled out of court the £35 million owed to Laker's creditors, staff and passengers. Laker himself reluctantly accepted £6 million in compensation and retreated to the Bahamas.


Frederick Alfred Laker was born in Canterbury on August 6 1922. His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family when Freddie was five, and his mother then worked as a cleaner. At the local Simon Langton School Freddie did not shine academically but told friends he was going to be a millionaire. His first job was delivering coal for an uncle.

At 16 he joined the flying-boat builders Short Brothers of Rochester as a teaboy and apprentice engineer, and studied maths and economics at night school. In the Second World War he worked for the Air Transport Auxiliary where he excelled at improvising repairs. He became flight engineer and then qualifyed as a ferry pilot himself.

By 1946, with a loan from a friend he set up Aviation Traders, dealing in war-surplus and then carrying passengers and freight in converted Halifax bombers. Laker made his first fortune from the Berlin airlift of 1948. The government chartered every available aeroplane from the many small independent airlines at generous rates. His profit, however, came from selling spare parts to the other airlines.

When the airlift ended, Laker judged the market to be overcrowded, and, as others went under, had his team at work smelting 6,000 engines for a saucepan manufacturer. In 1951 he returned to charter, carrying troops for the Army in aircraft rebuilt from crashed ones

In 1953 his Channel Air Bridge began flying passengers, and then cars, from Southend to Calais. In 1958 he sold his business, which was merged with others to form British United Airways. He became managing director of BUA, and it grew into the largest independent airline.  

British United Airways
In 1965 he resigned, forming Laker Airways to capitalise on the booming package holiday trade. Three innovations made the airline successful:

1) Laker chartered his aircraft to tour companies at a rate that cost them less the more they flew.
2) He saved money on fuel by telling his crews to fly at higher altitudes than usual and by pioneering the reduced thrust technique on take-off.
3) He also kept his fleet busy off-season, flying winter tours to the Mediterranean and Muslims to Mecca for the Haj.

Laker enjoyed the good life. At his peak he bought a Rolls-Royce each year and racehorses for his Epsom stud. He was once photographed zooming around the Gatwick runway pretending to be a Spitfire and he was voted "Man of the Year" and in 1978 knighted by the Callaghan government.

Yet he never lost his Kentish accent and had a reputation for frugality.  Laker's management style was to dominate. He knew each aspect of his business as well as any employee, and, while inspiring great loyalty, knew his own mind and got his own way. 

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Vladimir Raitz - The First Travel Pioneer





Continuing the theme of great travel entrepreneurs, let’s remember a true pioneer of the post-war package holiday industry; Vladimir Raitz.  

In the period from his first  trips to Corsica, Vladimir Raitz built the first, and one of the UK's most respected, holiday companies, Horizon Holidays, overseeing the business until the early 1970s.




Corsica for £32:10s per person and as much wine as you could put away

When Vladimir Raitz launched his business, few people could afford a foreign holiday. A return flight to Nice in 1950 for example, cost £70 (or about £1,700 today).  What Vladimir offered in 1950 was an all-inclusive package holiday to Corsica for £32 10s - including return flight, tented accommodation on the beach "delicious meat-filled meals and as much local wine as [you] could put away".

His first flight, with 11 paying customers looking forward to a week in the sun, took off from Gatwick in May 1950 in a government-surplus Dakota DC3. The plane landed at Lyon to refuel before continuing to Calvi. The whole journey took six hours.

Vladimir later recalled: "When we arrived at Corsica airport, there was nothing at all – not even a little hut. [We had] to shelter from the sun under the wings of the plane while we waited for the bus to pick us up." Once at the beach, the holiday-makers were greeted by large canvas tents, each with two beds. There was an area was set aside for "ablutions", a dining room, bar and dance-floor. "A pastis was a few pence," Raitz said, "a bottle of wine was nine pence."

His company was Horizon Holidays

Horizon Holidays..

 


Horizon soon added Majorca as a destination, followed by Sardinia, Malaga and Perpignan.  As it expanded, the firm added Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava, then a small fishing village with a handful of hotels and bars and no bank. Vladimir later regretted the over-development of that part of the Catalan coastline.

None of this was achieved without difficulty. British European Airways objected to his flying to Corsica because it constituted "material diversion of traffic" – despite the fact that they did not fly to the island. And at first he was only allowed to carry teachers and students as all other occupations were banned!

There were also strict government regulations about how much money you could take on an overseas holiday: "At first it was £50, and that was later cut to £25," he recalled. "But we could keep the price of accommodation down to about £15, and the charter flight was payable in sterling, so there was still some spending money left over."

His Early Days in Russia, Berlin and Mill Hill


Vladimir Raitz was born to Jewish middle-class family in Moscow on May 23 1922. His father was a doctor and his mother, Cecilia, a qualified dentist. In 1927 Cecilia left Moscow to join her parents, who had fled to Berlin. She took Vladimir with her and he never saw his father again.

In Berlin he saw the rise of Hitler but in 1936, Vladimir joined his Grandparents in London and went to Mill Hill School. He arrived fluent in Russian, German, Polish and French, but with no English and yet by the end of his first term he was top of the class in that subject. 

Vladimir went on to the London School of Economics, where he read History, then joined the Reuters news agency. Throughout the Second World War he interpreted foreign news broadcasts for Reuters and United Press.

He was still working for Reuters when, in 1949, his grandmother died, leaving him £3,000. He left the agency, using his windfall to establish Horizon Holidays.

He was aware that since the end of the war there had been a surplus of government aircraft which were available for charter. Most were taken up for transporting cargo but Raitz saw a different opportunity, having just been invited by another expatriate Russian to visit Corsica, where the man was running a beachside "holiday camp".

Competition Appears


Even Vladimir could not have foreseen the huge expansion in holiday travel that was to follow his Corsica experiment. Between 1960 and 1967, the number of Britons going abroad soared from 2.25 million a year to 5 million. Horizon became one of the UK's largest operators, spawning Club 18-30, which was, he claimed, simply a holiday company for young people and not as a vehicle for sun, booze and sex that it later became.

However, the company could not cope with the vicious price war that broke out in the early 1970s, sparked off mainly by the biggest operator, Clarksons. Horizon began to lose money. After a desperate struggle to keep it afloat, the final blow was dealt by the oil price crisis which followed the 1972 Arab-Israeli war. In February 1974 it was taken over by Court Line, Clarksons' parent company. Court Line itself went bust shortly afterwards, owing £7 million to some 100,000 holiday-makers.

The collapse was particularly serious because there were then no proper bonds or protection schemes to safeguard people's holidays against bankruptcy. In the wake of the event, Civil Aviation Authority bonds and the Air Travel Reserve Fund were established.


Later Reflections on the Effects of Package Travel


Vladimir admited to having mixed feelings about the consequences of modern tourism. Benidorm, he noted in 1989, "looks bloody awful now – but that's progress, I suppose". More thoughtfully, he added: "On one hand, I hate to see resorts being despoiled. Take Minorca. There used to be a beach, no road to it, you used to scramble down through the scrub. Today it is ringed with hotels. To that extent, I am sad... On the other hand, I think it's marvellous that 12 or 13 million people can have a Mediterranean holiday and enjoy themselves."

"Providing a fortnight in the Mediterranean sun to a wide segment of the British public, hereto the prerogative of well-to-do members of the bourgeoisie, brought with it what can only be described as a social revolution; the man in the street acquired a taste for wine, for foreign food, started to learn French, Spanish or Italian, made friends in the foreign lands he had visited – in fact became more 'cosmopolitan', with all that that entailed."

And Thomson too..


Vladimir remained one of the principal players in the British tour operating business for 25 years. On behalf of Sir Gordon Brunton, of the Thomson organisation, for example, he acquired Skytours and Riviera Holidays, which merged to become Thomson Holidays.

Despite the downfall of Horizon, Raitz remained in the travel industry. During the late 1970s he organised tours for the Maltese Tourist Board where I had the pleasure of working alongside him at Medallion Holidays.

Vladimir Gavrilovich Raitz, entrepreneur, born 23 May 1922; died 31 August 2010

Thursday 3 January 2013

Thomas Cook - The First Tour Operator!


Thomas Cook, was was born  in Melbourne, South Derbyshire, on 22nd November, 1808 leaving school at the age of ten to work as a gardener's boy on Lord Melbourne's estate.

The First Signs of a Travel Career

Cook attended the local Methodist Sunday School and was described as "an earnest, active, devoted, young Christian". He soon became a teacher at the Sunday School and eventually was appointed as its superintendent. At seventeen Thomas joined the local Temperance Society and over the next few years spent his spare-time campaigning against the consumption of alcohol.

In 1827 Cook abandoned his apprenticeship to become an itinerant village missionary, on a salary of £36 a year.  His job was to spread the Word by preaching, distributing tracts, and setting up Sunday schools throughout the south midland counties.  Thus began his career in travel.

Cook married in 1833 and became an active member of the local Temperance Society making speeches and publishing pamphlets pointing out the dangers of alcohol consumption. He also arranged large group picnics where participants were, according to the Temperance Messenger, sustained with "biscuits, buns and ginger beer". In 1840 Cook decided to make a career out of his temperance beliefs and founded the Children's Temperance Magazine.

The First ‘Package’ Holiday


In 1841 Cook had the idea of arranging an eleven-mile rail excursion from Leicester to a Temperance Society meeting in Loughborough on the newly extended Midland Railway. Cook charged his customers one shilling and this included the cost of the rail ticket and the food on the journey. The venture was a great success and Cook decided to start his own business running rail excursions.

He described this as ‘the starting point of a career of labour and pleasure which has expanded into … a mission of goodwill and benevolence on a grand scale’

The First ‘Brochure’

Cook set up as a bookseller and printer in Leicester. He specialized in temperance literature and opened up temperance hotels in Derby and Leicester and continued to organize excursions.  In 1845, having won a reputation as an entrepreneur who could obtain cheap rates from the railway companies for large parties, he undertook his first profit-making excursion - to Liverpool, Caernarfon, and Mount Snowdon. Cook wrote a handbook which resembled in essential respects the modern tour operator's brochure.

In 1846 Cook took 500 people from Leicester on a tour of Scotland that involved visits to Glasgow and Edinburgh. One of his greatest achievements was to arrange for over 165,000 people to attend the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. 

The First Ticketing Problems!

Cook's travel business was badly damaged in 1862 when the Scottish railway companies refused to issue any more group tickets for Cook's popular tours north of the border. Cook instead decided to take advantage of new rail links to take large numbers of tourists to the continent. In his first year he arranged for 2000 visitors to travel France and 500 to Switzerland. In 1864 Cook began taking tourists to Italy.

The First Mass-Market Backlash

Cook was charged with swamping Europe with "everything that is low-bred, vulgar and ridiculous". And others complained about the bad taste of taking tourists to the battlefields of the American Civil War.

Cook moved his business to London. His son John managed the London office of the company that was now known as Thomas Cook & Son and helped to expand the company by opening offices in Manchester, Brussels, and Cologne. In 1869 the company arranged tours of Egypt and the Holy Land, something he described as "the greatest event of my tourist life".


The First Boardroom Revolt

Thomas Cook had a difficult relationship with his son and only made him a partner in 1871. His reluctance was probably due to disputes between the two men, mainly over financial matters. Unlike Thomas, John believed that business should be kept separate from religion and philanthropy. He also upset his father by being more adventurous in investing money. He opened a hotel at Luxor and refurbished the Nile steamers of the khedive, from whom he obtained the passenger agency, thus helping to make Egypt a safer and more attractive destination.

The First Round The World Tour


By 1872 Thomas Cook & Son was able to offer a 212 day Round the World Tour for 200 guineas. The journey included a steamship across the Atlantic, a stage coach from the east to the west coast of America, a paddle steamer to Japan, and an overland journey across China and India.

Thomas continued to disagree with his son about the way the company should be run. After a serious dispute in 1878, Thomas decided to retire to Thorncroft, the large house which he had built on the outskirts of Leicester, and allow John Cook to run the business on his own.

And A Sad Ending

Cook led a lonely life after the deaths of his unmarried daughter Annie in 1880 and his wife four years later. He continued to travel, however, making his final pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1888. Much of his time and money were spent, as they had been throughout his career, in work for the Baptist church, the temperance movement, and other charities. He did not attend the firm's silver jubilee celebrations in 1891; whether this was because of blindness and physical incapacity or because  his son John did not want him there is not clear

Thomas Cook died at Knighton, Leicester, on 18th July 1892.

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