| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 17/07/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 13 |
| Copyright: Other |
Increasingly, it seems, it is not the quality ofyour product but the way in which it is presentedthat can make or break your business
Noel Josephides
How important perception is, both in our lives and businesses.Last week I reserved two tickets to Nice for a weekend in August. I booked them with British Midland, a company with which we work very successfully on a charter series from Heathrow to Preveza.
The flight to Nice is from Heathrow, which is very convenient, and in-flight catering is included. EasyJet from Luton was more expensive and any food on board was extra.
The fact is that the likes of EasyJet have to charge plenty in the peak months to make up for their low prices, on which they base their advertising, in the low season.
So, are such airlines really low cost? Certainly on the route to Athens both Olympic and Cronus are often cheaper than EasyJet. But we don’t consider them to be so.
Do you remember Sunmed Holidays to Greece in the late 1970s? Those of us in the Greek market could never understand how Vic Fatah could charge so much for what was very often standard accommodation.
Yet the public clamoured to visit Greece through Sunmed, such was the image that had been created. The perception was that it offered upmarket holidays. If you use thick paper, employ a professional photographer, designer and UV varnish a front cover, the thickness of which is closer to cardboard than paper, you can call yourself an upmarket quality tour operator.
The holidays may be fairly standard but you can fool most of the people most of the time.
We are being told that, through the use of 360-degree cameras, Web portrayals of properties will give the public a much better feel of the accommodation they are booking as they will be able to move through rooms and see what the views from the property will be like.
Do you think that any hotel or accommodation provider will allow an unflattering portrayal? The camera will be pointed where the best results can be obtained, much the same as with standard brochures. Yet, the viewer will believe that by looking on the Web they will have better information.
Greek airports always take a lot of criticism. People complain about the time it takes to pass through the immigration formalities and customs. But clients forget what it’s like to enter the US – a most welcoming country, but one whose immigrations and customs procedures make you feel like a criminal from the time you fill in the ridiculous forms they give you on the aircraft.
The marketing power of the larger tour operators would have one believe they also organise the best holidays.
As ever, the 2000 Observer Travel Awards, held in Boston, prove the opposite.
It’s the smaller tour operators such as Laskarina (overall winner yet again), VFB, Inntravel, Citalia, Exodus and Explore that rule the roost. And, when it comes to brochures, it’s a tiny company called High Places that was judged to have the best. As for Sunvil, we slipped to 12th – we’ll have to try harder this year, yet I wonder how drunk Observer/Guardian readers were when they voted Ayia Napa 48th in a list of favourite cities ahead of the likes of Milan, Geneva and Athens?
“The marketing” power of the larger operators would have one believe they alsoorganise the best holidays