Is it going to be a V, W or U??

A record surge in confidence among business professionals indicates Britain's recession is at an end, according to research.

Optimism among professionals in the third quarter hit its highest level since the start of the financial crisis two years ago, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) said.

The confidence measure jumped to 4.8 at the end of June from -28.2 in March - the biggest improvement since the survey began in 2003. The institute predicts that the economy will grow by 0.5% this quarter, breaking five quarters of falling output.

ICAEW chief executive Michael Izza said the findings suggest that "the UK recession is at an end".

He added: "While there is no doubt that the UK economy is on its way to recovery, we shouldn't underestimate the challenges ahead for businesses."

The FTSE 100 rose 41.81 points to 4891.70 in early trading on Monday , a rise of 0.84%, following Friday's near-100 point gain when the inde x pushed through 4800 for the first time since last October.

Asian shares also rose strongly on fresh optimism over the global recovery, following upbeat comments from US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and news that Thailand has come out of recession.

The ICAEW survey showed that UK businesses expected a rise in all but one of 14 key financial performance indicators in the coming year, in contrast to earlier in the year when most were expected to contract.

The research found 41% of senior business professionals were more confident about the economic prospects facing their business in the next year. But only 6% were much more confident, indicating a continued level of caution over the timing and speed of the recovery.

IT was the most optimistic sector, followed by banking, finance and insurance firms. The survey found "a remarkable upturn" in confidence in the banking sector. Signs of stabilisation in the housing market also helped boost optimism for property firms.

Debate now centres not on when the recovery will come but in what form it will be; as economist debate a 'V', 'U' or 'W' shaped recovery..

But more of that anon..

Wind City Afrika

Fes has just returned from a wonderful break in Morocco; our first time in this fascinating country and most certainly not to be our last. Although we were working with one of the developers in the town of Essouria, we had the opportunity to take a few days out to have a look round and enjoy the surroundings a little - a rare treat.

Keen to control our costs, we booked our flight to Marrakesh with our old friends Ryanair. And we were stunned by the efficiency and friendliness on board! The flight took off and landed on time (there and back) and the cabin staff were excellent. In fact, the hostess on our return was the very self same Magdelena that appeared, clad only in her swim suit, reclining in the mouth of a Rolls Royce engine as this months Ryan's Girls!

Essouria is 150km to the west of Marrakesh and enjoys the new moniker of 'Windy City Afrika'. And it is! A haven for windsurfers and kite surfers alike, the sea is lively without being too dangerous, the beaches are wide and flat and open and the wind strong and incessant. There's a very efficient Club Mistral at the end of the long beach that offers some highly economical packages for those wishing to try their hand or improve their technique. All the instructors are, of course, supremely talented and multi-lingual to cater for all nationalities.

We found the Moroccan people, charming, friendly, honest, modest and full of integrity. It was a joy to spend some time in their country and a pleasure to meet and work with the people we met. Particularly, we would like to thank Abdul our helper, Said our driver and importantly, Hassan our barman!

Twitter for the Travellers

At FES, we endevour to keep pace with technology and have for a long time been advocates of the new opportunities afforded by the Social Networking Sites. It's less than ten years since the first wave hit with the introduction of online travel agencies but big changes are afoot.

Online travel, in what ever form it was and still is defined, became the largest industry on the web in record time. Changes on a scale imagined only by few, have happened since then and there is not one segment of the travel industry that is not affected by that first shift to commerce transacted online.

Enabled by blogs, pod casts and social networking sites as well as other web 2.0 technology introductions like mashups, the consumer today can be as informed about any subject as never before in history and even more importantly, has the easy means to communicate his or her knowledge and expertise to anyone else in the world.

In the context of the travel industry, everyone can become a travel agent, tour operator, or even destination marketer at least in his or her own mind!

Companies and organizations will in future increasingly have to try to interject themselves into all the conversations going on among customers in the marketplace about their product, service, or destination, rather than dominating what in the past was a one-way communication. This new C2C reality will have a significant impact on the role of marketing in any industry. Conversations among the people in your marketplace happen whether you like it or not.

Good marketing is encouraging the right sort of conversations.

The first signs of this world of Web 2.0, which lets the audience participate in the production and distribution of content and tag it with keywords, are a number of new types of sites sprouting up such as Del.icio.us, Rojo, Digi, Tagzania, Gusto, Wikia, and many more.

The most important feature these sites have in common, is the ability for users to collect information and articles from sites they find of interest, add their own comments and tag them with keywords. This makes it easy for sharing with, and viewing by, friends or the public at large. Google Map mashups are other new types of sites allowing travelers to get a detailed look of a property or attraction location. Combined with personal annotations and reviews by others travelers can get a feel for the place more real and up-to-date than previously possible.

Then there is TVTrip offering detailed videos of properties as a useful planning tool. In the small group and affinity travel market there is Groople, which includes tools for group planners.

Traditional companies, such as Starwood Hotels also have embraced this new trend. Sheraton now makes customer feedback and reviews the focus of their web presence right from the home page.

Blogs and pod casts are other developments with significant potential impact on both travel planning and the actual travel experience. Anyone with web access and some basic knowledge of computer software applications can in fact start a blog or publish a pod cast, making their experiences immediately available to the world at large. With a free RSS feed reader, this new user generated content is easily available for anyone with updates delivered automatically.

The specific impact of Travel 2.0 on the various sectors in the travel industry is yet to be determined. What seems clear already, however, is that the role of any intermediary is being challenged even more by all this user-generated content.

For destination marketing organizations (DMO) the dynamics of existing business relationships will no doubt undergo rapid and significant change. It will no longer be sufficient to maintain and develop an information rich destination website. To build a platform that taps into and feeds off the various sites mentioned earlier and to facilitate the dialog among past and potential future visitors is fast becoming a necessity to stay relevant.

The opportunities have never been better to truly achieve Word of Mouth (and Word of Mouse!) and stimulate the buzz around a destination. What no DMO should attempt is try to control the dialog or manage it.

The mirror has never been shinier but it also has never before been pointed as directly at the destination and its suppliers as it is today. Accept it, embrace change, innovate and start joining the conversation, today. The alternative is being left behind and risk being ignored.

India bucks the trend..

It's great to read that Marriott International is still planning to open seven hotels in India this year. These new openings will offer employment opportunities in the hospitality sector across the country.

Marriot share our views on the Indian market, and state, “Despite the global economic slowdown and pockets of political unrest, India’s tourism sector continues to demonstrate encouraging resilience with total room-night sales increasing by over 500 percent over the past five years"

"The country’s rapidly-expanding middle class and buying power, growing industrial infrastructure, rich cultural heritage, and natural attractions are all combining to make India a strong inbound and outbound tourism market in which we are delighted to be a part.”

Marriot anticipate that they will require approximately 2,000 individuals across all operational and marketing disciplines to staff these seven hotels in the coming months, so that's great news for the Indian hospitality industry.

Marriott’s new hotels will represent three of the company’s six international brands:

luxury/The 320-room JW Marriott Hotel Bangalore

deluxe/ The 426-room Pune Marriott Hotel & Convention Center

moderate/Five new Courtyard by Marriott hotels:
- 199-room Courtyard by Marriott Gurgaon
- 153-room Courtyard by Marriott West Pune
- 193-room Courtyard by Marriott Hyderabad
- 164-room Courtyard by Marriott Ahmedabad
- 299-room Courtyard by Marriott Mumbai International Airport

When opened, these hotels will more than double the Marriott International hotel brands portfolio in India, which today consists of six operating properties. Another 14 previously-announced hotels are expected to open in India through 2012 as part of Marriott International’s global pipeline of hotels under construction, awaiting conversion, or approved for development.

Virgin trades on BA customers

We see Virgin Atlantic has managed to nearly double its pre-tax profits from £34.8 million last year to £68.4 million for the year from March 2008 to February 2009.

Virgin said the growth was down to a rise in premium travellers and “prudent management decisions”.

In a week that has also seen British Airways announce record losses of over £400m these results are even more staggering.

It doesn't need an aviation expert to spot a trend here, it's clear that BA are loosing their premium traffic, which provides a large proportion of it's profits as their customers are trading 'down' from First and Business class to Virgins Premium Economy.

We've always liked Virgin. We applaud their way of doing things, with an emphasis on customer service so we like to see them picking up business in this way.

In Richard Bransons book, 'Loosing my Virginity' he gives a speech to Airline executives which goes along the lines of:

"Its easy to become a millionaire in the airline buisiness" he says. "First of all you start off as a billionaire!"

Do what it says on the tin..

We see Thomson and First Choice have seemingly announced a new policy of allowing their overseas representatives to address and solve customer complaints during holidays. Is it just us, or is this stating the 'bleeding' obvious?

The TUI Travel companies said the rationale behind the move was ‘to recover service failures quickly and efficiently, reducing the need for customers to pursue issues with customer services on their return to the UK’.

Overseas representatives are already trained in accordance with company customer service guidelines, but are now also being encouraged to use their discretion and initiative to ensure that the merits of each case and ‘exceptions to the rule’ can be considered...

Inevitably things can and do go wrong with holiday plans, but a simple quick solution normally results in a converted customer, one who far from being a complainer becomes an advocate for the companies quick and efficient handling of any problem. Best fix things on the spot than allow resentment to grow and fester over two weeks and then result in a letter from the small claims court!

Ian Chapman, head of overseas for Thomson and First Choice, said: ‘Holidays are so important, never more so than in the current economic climate'. Meaning, we guess that clients are particularly keen to get their monies worth and less tolerant to things going wrong. All their overseas staff will undertake a three-day training programme to ‘motivate and inspire them in first class customer service'.

The fact is that you don't really need long sophisticated training programmes and dedicated phone lines to deliver exceptional customer service. You just need to do what it says on the tin! And then a little bit more.

How much more? Just a little bit. The runner who wins the 100m by 0.0001 of a second has just done that little bit more - so sometimes exceptional customer service is just answering the phone, or turning up when you say you will. Now that's good service!

All at sea with the French hoteliers..

We are pleased to see the Indian Cruise market starting to develop. Although spurred by price cuts, the Indian Cruise market is up 20 per cent in April.

Cruise tourism is still a niche segment in India and accounts for only two per cent of all outbound tourism. However, this year, travel companies are offering competitive packages to attract customers and the size of the Indian outbound cruise tourism industry is estimated to be worth about Rs 240 crore with around 80,000 people cruising per year, mostly taking shorter and faster cruises rather than those favoured by Americans and Europeans.

This reminds us of a tour we helped organise many years ago for an international coach tour operator, seeking to offer short, quick itineraries around Europe specifically for the Indian market.

The tours were a great success until we had a special tour request from a group of Jains. While their itinerary was straight forward, their dietary requirements threw our French and Swiss hoteliers into a spin!

" So that'll be 40 vegetarians for lunch, no meat, no chicken and no vegetables that grow under the ground..".

We can still hear the hoteliers response now..