| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 26/06/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 34 |
| Copyright: Other |
A week in the life of Jo Rzymowska
Dreamticket.com commercial director Jo Rzymowska charts the progress of the travel Internet start-up, due to be launched shortly.
MondayFeeling rather fragile after an eventful weekend in Dublin. What a city! The pubs certainly know what customer service is all about…the barmen charm you with their wit and constantly ensure that your glass is full! I felt somewhat guilty as I had left Esther Sparrow, the product manager and the content team working all weekend loading product onto the site. Meanwhile the techies made enhancements such as redesigning our navigation bar as a result of feedback that has come out of consumer testing. Live testing continues with 1,000s of simulated visitors to the site simultaneously making bookings to really put the system through its paces.
Tuesday
Met with Jeff Down, our commercial analyst (who joined us from Avis), to get an update on our car rental service with Holiday Autos. It is great to work with the Holiday Autos team, who are prepared to take calculated risks, try something new and constantly strive to exceed customer expectations. We’re working together to develop an integrated solution to link up between our two sites.
Wednesday
Great start to the day. More product for next summer has arrived from a major tour operator. We felt like cracking open the champagne but instead started loading over 300 properties into the system. The ‘silver surfers’ from our backers, Ticket Travel Group, arrived from Stockholm at 7.30am. The average age of the board is 48, giving us a wealth of experience to rely on. There was good feedback from the business to business deals we’ve done and they’re pleased with the changes that we’ve made to the site based on customer feedback. The good news is that, on the strength of this, Ticket Travel Group confirmed further investment.
Thursday
Met with Bill Kirkwood from Travelstore.com to discuss a ‘click through’ partnership.
Travelstore is 100% business travel and we are 100% leisure travel so it would be win-win for both parties. Also met with Ian Brooks, managing director of Virgin.com, to discuss the joint meetings we are planning to have with travel partners at the Institute of Travel and Tourism to explain how the partnership will work and more importantly what’s in it for them. After knowing me for 15 years he can finally spell my name by heart!
Friday
Off to ITT in Las Vegas tomorrow so it’s the final rehearsal of Lawrence’s speech. He’s on a panel with Tony Bennett from Destinex.com and Gary Wardrope from Travel Channel. No doubt it will lead to an interesting debate. To think that at last year’s ITT the dot com word was hardly mentioned, and I am sure it will dominate this year’s conference. More than most trade events, it always attracts a high calibre of delegates and good speakers – this year looks exceptionally good but I guess you have to say that when your chief executive is on a panel!